Rick's Reflections

The Faithful Witness

2012-01-27T15:38:00.000-08:00

The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple.
-Psalm 19: 7B

The word "testimony" ('aduth) is often a synonym for "law" in the Old Testament. It comes from a Hebrew word that means to repeat or reiterate--a courtroom term that described the repetitions (for emphasis) of a witness's statement about an event. It applies to God's witness to Himself in His character and in His actions. That witness can be His own word as expressed in the law: the Ten Commandments kept in the ark of the covenant were referred to as the "tablets of the testimony." It can be a divine symbol existing on the physical level: the tent in the wilderness was referred to as the "tabernacle of witness." The repetition of the law's witness is also reflected in nature in this same Psalm ("Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge").

This piling up, as it were, of witnesses to God and by God--from God's existence within Himself, to His witness in law and gospel, to the witness of man-made symbols, to the witness of nature--expresses a pleading earnestness spoken over and over again to man, who prefers to close his eyes and put his hands over his ears. It is a cry of grace and a threat of judgment.

The Psalmist calls this testimony "sure" (ne'e-manah--from which we derive amen). At a physical level, the word can mean "steady," "fixed," "confirmed," "supported," "established." At a deeper level, it can be translated "trustworthy" or "faithful." It seems almost redundant to use such an adjective to support God's witness to Himself. And yet there again is this repetitive pressure to convince man that God is, and that He is true, and that He is faithful to what He is, and to His truth. It is the confirmation of what is already confirmed, a shout over the din of the fall.

The Sure Testimony is said to "make wise the simple." How? First, we need to remember that "wisdom" is not just intellectual knowledge, but a type of living learned by repentance, by faith, and often by suffering. The second clue is in the word "simple." The Hebrew pe-thi comes from a root meaning "open." The simple person, then, is open to everything and anything, and has no stability, direction, or inner guard (discernment). Interestingly, the cognate verb form of this noun means to "deceive" or "seduce."

When the serpent in the garden tempted Eve, he called 'aduth ne'emanah into question. First he attacked the witness ("has God said?"), and then God's trustworthiness ("God knows...you will be like God...."). When the foundation crumbled, Eve became the first open-minded person on the planet. Since then human independence has become both a virtue and a bondage.

The tempter is described as cunning, or "subtle" ('arum). This is the same word that is translated "naked" in the previous verse, speaking of Adam and Eve. While Hebrew scholars agree that the two words come from different roots, it is hard to believe that the author of Genesis did not intend a play on words when he placed them in such close proximity. The tempter hid behind his deceit in the same way that Adam and Eve hid behind the trees of the garden. His subtlety was really nakedness. That nakedness was exposed when God prophesied that he would be rendered powerless by One who would crush his head. That one would be the Wisdom of God who would make wise the simple, the Faithful Witness who's faithfulness is proved by the destruction of death, and by his control of human history (Revelation 1: 5).

The Perfect Law: Psalm 19:7a

2012-01-21T09:14:00.000-08:00

The law of the LORD is perfect, reviving the soul.

Torah is a broad term to define. While it is usually translated "law," it carries a broader meaning, closer to "instruction." Therefore the Pentateuch is Torah, but the term can include the whole Tanakh (Old Testament), as well as the act of studying it, as in "doing Torah." And doing Torah can be relational as well as intellectual--relational in its interaction with other students (horizontal), and also with God himself (vertical). In that sense Torah is a way of life.

The author of Psalm 19 describes Torah as "perfect"(a derivative of thamam)--another word with multiple meanings, encompassing the idea of "mature," "complete," "full," "reaching a pre-determined end;" as well as "blameless" and "unblemished." One would expect the Septuagint (Greek translation) to use the word teleios, picking up on the idea of completeness. But instead, the translators chose the word amomos: "spotless," "unblemished," a word most readily associated with animal sacrifice.

It is hard for a Christian not to recognize Torah's personification of itself in Christ. He is "the way, the truth, and the life." He is the "end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes," and "the lamb without blemish or spot."

Furthermore, the unblemished Torah is described as "reviving the soul." The Hebrew word for "revive" is a derivative of shuv, a common verb meaning to"return" or "come back," or, in King James, "convert." The response to unblemished Torah is the restoration of a broken or lost soul.

What, then, is the connection between the perfect Torah and a revived or repentant soul? Keil, in his commentary on the Psalms, points to the attractiveness of Torah, which is "spotless and harmless, absolutely well-meaning, and altogether directed towards the well-being of man." Torah is both beautiful and trustworthy. But does the depraved soul always respond to beauty and faithfulness? The commentator goes on the say (I paraphrase) that Torah "imparts newness of life, and quickens the soul." This is closer to the truth. It is Torah itself that revives. There is within the personified Torah of the new covenant a power to draw a broken soul to itself (himself)--a magnet with the power to work the sought conversion.

Any man who approaches Torah runs the risk of being apprehended by it. Any man who beholds the face of Christ, no matter how faintly, is in danger of being swept away into the whirlpool of conversion. It is also true that every Christian man knows the power of Christ to shatter old images of Himself and bring the believer into deeper waters. It is because "the law of the lord is perfect, reviving the soul."

Faith and Fury

2012-01-13T15:46:00.000-08:00

Christianity got over the difficulty of combining furious opposites, by keeping them both, and keeping them both furious.
G.K. Chesterton

A few days ago I attended a funeral at a home for a 6 months old child who died unexpectedly in his sleep. It was an intense experience. There was mourning and crying, evangelism and repentance, love and embracing. There was none of the distant “I’m here to pay my respects” atmosphere of a lot of American funerals. It was, well, real.

One of the things that struck me was that no one questioned that God was responsible for the death of this child. At the same time, those present were seeking God for comfort. The Taker of life was appealed to as the Giver of comfort. There was peace in that house. But don’t misunderstand me: the peace in that home was not an easy peace, but a peace that came from the imponderable balance of God as King, and God as Father. There was a certain fury in it. And that reminded me of Chesterton’s words.

Christianity has always had vigorous contradictions in its deepest mysteries, and the poles of each contradiction are heresies. God is three Persons in one Essence. But He is neither three Gods nor one Person in three modes. The truth is in the wonder that is neither. The Son of God is two natures in one Person. But He is neither an amalgam of two natures, nor two Persons in one body. The truth is in the wonder that is neither.

The fact is that the great mysteries invoke not understanding, but a confession of faith. The early creeds do not begin with “I comprehend,” but with credo (“I believe”). And I like to think that the church of those days did not mumble the credo, but spoke it with profundity and energy.

I remember teaching a discipleship class years ago in Guatemala. Somehow we got on the subject of the attributes of God. I went to the board, and at one end wrote Sobierno (sovereignty), and at the other Bondad (goodness), and asked if the students could reconcile the two, or if they had a favorite. There ensued the usual heated argument that arises over these two poles. One side accused the other of believing in an arbitrary tyrant, and, conversely, of believing in a weak and confused God controlled by chance and the will of man. We finally concluded that one could not stand without the other, and both needed to be confessed furiously.

I have now lapsed into theology, and from theology into abstraction. But what I saw the other night was not abstract. It was the reality being lived out. I think I understand better now what Jesus meant when he said, “Until now the kingdom of God suffers violence, and the violent take it by force.”

Athens and Jerusalem

2012-01-07T10:36:00.000-08:00

I recently read John Joseph's Collins’ Between Athens and Jerusalem, in preparation for a New Testament course I'll be teaching in a few weeks. Collin's book is a study of the attempts of the Jewish Diaspora to offer an apologetic for their faith in a Greek environment during the inter-testament period (@200 BC to 100 AD), particularly in Alexandria. He analyses a number of pseudo-graphical and apocryphal texts from the period, with some references to Philo.

Let me try to summarize, though I run the risk of over-simplifying: the Greek thinking class in Egypt during the Ptolemaic period was philosophical and in pursuit of the good life based on reason. Many of them leaned towards monotheism and were fairly moral. Jewish thinkers, who were driven by a need to be accepted in the culture, assumed Greek categories and attempted to mold their own tradition into those. Therefore the Torah was presented as a superior philosophy, and obedience to the commandments was a means to discovering the “good, the true, and the beautiful.” Traditions that made the Jews unique, such as circumcision and dietary laws, were played down or not mentioned at all.

How successful Jewish apologetic writings actually were is debatable. Collins believes that much of the attempt involved preaching to the choir. There was always the issue of whether Jews should be included in the Greek upper and middle classes, or in the Egyptian lower class. The former was generally true under the Ptolemies, the latter under Roman rule. While there were notable conversions to Judaism during the period, most apologetic literature was designed to help the Jew define his own place in the society while holding to his traditions.

This is a fascinating period of history that has led me up a number of rabbit trails that may or may not be relevant. Follow if you wish.

First, it is easy in hindsight to condemn the Jewish writers of this period for blatant syncretism. The Hasidim and the Pharisees in Palestine certainly thought so. We see a result of this in the conflict between Greek and Aramaic speaking Christians in the early church. But syncretism is always easier to spot from outside a culture than within it. Consider the overlap of the “American Way of Life” and Christianity in our own time. We are far too close to both to untangle them. Perhaps we need African and Asian eyes to gain perspective.

Second, those centuries are in some ways a microcosm of western civilization (even down to our day) which can be defined in terms of the relationship of Hellenism and Hebraism. In an essay by that name in Culture and Anarchy, Matthew Arnold defined both: “The uppermost idea of Hellenism is to see things as they really are; the uppermost idea of Hebraism is conduct and obedience.” Both seek to attain salvation, one by right thinking, the other by right action.

Arnold saw the Renaissance of the 14th and 15th Centuries as the rediscovery of Hellenism in what was a Hebraic culture, followed by a Hebraic reaction in the Reformation, followed by the twin antagonists--the Enlightenment and Puritanism, both of which influenced our American founding documents. We’ve never quite settled whether our founding fathers were Christians or humanists. I’ve read books assigning them to both categories, written with great conviction and copious footnotes. My favorite was the tongue-in-cheek wag who gave up and described them as “Evangelical, Bible-believing deists.” My point here is not to discredit one or the other, but to suggest that both are alive and well with us, and are still intertwined in our culture, mirrored in our “conservative” and “liberal” terminology.

Third: “Morph” is an interesting new word in the American vocabulary. It has a more sinister tone than “metamorphasize.” One thinks of shape changers and zombies. It conveys the idea of change, not usually for the better. It also conveys the notion that that which “morphs” contains within itself the seed of its own change, usually for the worse, though I suppose something can morph “up.” It has a fatalistic tone. Anyway--after that digression--I was struck in Collins’ book with how both Hellenism and Hebraism morph into other forms through history.

For instance, Collins spends a good deal of time on the transition in Greek thought from rationalism to mysticism, how even in Plato there is a personification of philosophy that leads to the exaltation of the logos or sophia. There is a steady progression from the pursuit of pure Forms to the chain of being that leads to Light in later Gnosticism. Some Jewish writers of the period capitalized on this “ascent” and equated the Light with the Giver of Torah. This “morphing” from reason to secret revelation of the divine (from science to alchemy) reoccurs in history. Consider modern rationalistic evolutionists whose description of the life force (elan vital) is loaded with so much awe that it borders on worship. Whew. I’m not sure I can go any further with that.

But having gone there, I suppose it’s necessary to ask if Hebraism can morph. Pure Hebraism, in my mind, was never really meant to be a religion of salvation by law, but of love and grace, as the believer was forced by his failures in his duties to seek for supernatural intervention. Consider that while Psalm 119 is packed with synonyms for “commandment,” it is equally packed with imperatives like “teach me.” “revive me,” “open my eyes.” Without this craving for grace, Hebraism becomes self-righteous legalism, which is exactly what it morphs into. The church is certainly no stranger to it.

So, I suppose, as Hellenism and Hebraism morph into their mature forms, thinking westerners will be confronted with either mysticism or legalism, a poor choice.

Fourth: Let me at this point speak as a Christian, since we are dealing with world-views that deal with salvation. The problem with Hellenism and Hebraism, rationalism and action, mysticism and legalism, is that they all involve human effort in the attainment of whatever “salvation” might mean, whether it be eternal life or a peaceful existence in this one. Even Matthew Arnold, whose bias is definitely towards Hellenism, admits that both views ignore the sinfulness of sin. Reason is both finite and twisted. Dutiful action before God is always tainted with subtle self-centeredness. Both fail to deliver what they promise.

I would like to be able to say that Christianity offers a way out. But the fact is that Christianity has been as influenced by Hellenism and Hebraism as any institution in western culture. The Alexandrian school of Christianity continued the allegorical method of Philo, and I am not sure whether the Roman Church has yet decided whether Origen was a heretic. Synergistic legalism has created long lists of do’s and don’ts that rival the Pharisaic code of Jesus’ day. Christianity can almost be defined by its relationship to Hellenism and Hebraism (or their conflict) in any point of its history.

So instead of considering Christianity, let‘s consider its Head. There we begin to get some light. At that point the issue becomes one of soteriology. If my reason is flawed, how do I find wisdom? If I am cursed with pride and selfishness, where do I find the power to fulfill my duty? And here we move from ideas to direction--Hellenism and Hebraism both call me up. But the glory of the Gospel is that God comes down. Wisdom comes to me. Power to obey comes to me. God takes the initiative in a world that has exhausted its own. The embodiment of all that Hellenism and Hebraism ever wished to be becomes incarnate in a world that cannot find up. The truth is backwards.

“Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek after wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.”

-1 Corinthians 1:20-25 (ESV)

American Gods

2011-11-12T16:58:00.000-08:00

Just finished reading Neil Gaiman's American Gods. Written in 2001, the publishers have come out with an expanded version this year, and the book is experiencing a resurgence. Most modern novels are written as screen-plays, and American Gods is no different. The internet tells me the movie will be out soon. Hopefully we will be spared the gratuitous sex scenes, but I doubt it.

The plot of American Gods is this: America is populated by a hosts of old gods brought over by immigrants from Europe, Africa, India, and eastern Asia. These gods only live because somewhere someone still believes in them. They are weak and dying out because America is not a fertile land for gods, and because new materialistic gods (automobiles, internet, etc) are usurping the need for them. The new gods are short-lived because technology is constantly changing.

War clouds between the two groups thicken as the plot unfolds, until the inevitable conflict erupts at (would you believe?) Rock City on Lookout Mountain. Disaster is averted because Shadow, the anti-hero, uncovers a plot by Odin and Loki, who have created the whole scenario to increase their power by bloodshed and chaos. At the last minute he addresses the gathered combatants, stops the conflict, and everyone goes home to live (or fade away) happily ever after.

It is always good to read fiction at several levels, and I want to try and evaluate it in layers. First, from a Christian perspective: Gaiman's approach is purely humanistic. The gods are projections of men's needs and visions, and lose their power and their own existence if they are not believed in and worshiped. In contrast the God of the Two Testaments is not diminished in his essence by lack of faith or adoration. He is a concrete reality apart from any perception of him.

Gaiman's personification of the gods may express a deeper reality in Christian cosmology. One of the most humorous passages is a conversation between the goddess Eostre and a waitress in a local restaurant. When asked if she believes in goddesses, the waitress replies that she worships the inner feminine principle--adhering to an abstraction in the face of the fearful reality. Christianity certainly believes in personalities behind bad thinking.

Jesus is marginalized in American Gods. He is pictured briefly roaming the Middle East and looking lost. Shadow's conversation with him is not in the body of the text, but is added in the appendix of the new edition. Jesus complains that he feels spread too thin by the multiplicity of interpretations of who he is. He also feels harried by the number of prayers that involve solving people's problems. Hmm.

Gaiman also takes the classic humanist position that all religion is projection, and that Christianity is simply an extension of the old mythologies--that Christianity stole the best of paganism. Christmas is the Saturnalia, Easter is Eostre's day, etc. This is no place to take on those worn arguments. Gaiman needs a dose of George McDonald, Chesterton, Tolkien, and CS Lewis, who dealt definitively with them (mythology is the result of "rays of celestial glory falling on a garbage heap of imbecility....").

In the end, Gaiman favors stereotypical American Indian pantheism. Brother fox and brother wolf and sister moon and brother man are all one in the loving hand of mother earth. Nothing new here.

Then there is American Gods as literature: All good fiction tells the truth. It creeps out sometimes in spite of the author's attempt to go in a different direction. Behold! Shadow, the dark hero, dies alone, tied to a tree, fulfilling a covenant with the great sky-father (Odin), who turns out to be his biological father as well (Shadow is therefore man and god). He descends into the lower regions, where he learns great and mystical truths, defeats the powers of darkness, and returns to life just in time to save the earth from destruction. He reveals the heart of a secret murderer, and grants his wife (bride??) her final wish. Shadow possesses none of the depth of Jean Valjean or Sydney Carton, or even Frodo and Sam. But there it is: the same theme stated over again. Dark truth, but truth. Astounding.

Lastly, American Gods as a piece of "americana": Gaiman seems to want it looked at that way. It is, at a cultural level, a statement about materialism and spirituality. American technological and communicative inventiveness is moving so fast that it is impossible to catch up, and American gods are changing so rapidly, that a spiritual exhaustion and hunger is on the rise. Unfortunately, many are "looking for love in all the wrong places." American Gods is a good synopsis of current cultural tensions, and reveals an opportunity for the church, if she can humble herself and learn the language.

Summer Thoughts

2011-08-12T16:58:00.000-07:00

During the summer months my reading has consisted in what I would call devotional literature: portions of John Chrysostom, Augustine, St. John of the Cross, de Caussade, St. Seraphim, Hannah Whithall Smith, Calvin’s Institutes, and Luther's Table Talk. I've done this purposefully because I've had an urge to feed my soul instead of my mind, feeling that I need to shake my encrusted presuppositions and habits.

All those men and women of the Spirit have challenged and worked changes in my inner self. But I find myself coming away with a satiety that makes me uncomfortable and still unfulfilled. All of these works share a common cast of characters-- two, to be exact: God and the human soul. Simply put, spirituality is vertical. Horizontal relationships with other human beings, especially Christians, are secondary fruits of the inner changes wrought on the soul by God Himself. That the horizontal itself might be a means of discovering God seems rare in the devotional literature.

That does not mean that these writers do not mention or exalt the place of the church in the believer’s life. But it is the church defined by function: it is the authoritative and only source of Word and Sacrament. The church becomes a shadowy abstraction that provides necessary services, instead of a living organism that brings the life of Christ to me through flesh and blood.

What is the Word unless it comes to me through another, who in his own uniqueness sees truths and tastes Christ in ways that my own frame of mind would keep me blind to until I die? What is the Word unless someone I trust holds me to it, and insists that I walk it out instead of intellectualizing about it?

And what is the Sacrament if we do not understand that we are one Body because we partake of the one Loaf? That as I feed on Christ I feed on my brother, and as I feed on my brother I feed on Christ?

I have surfeited myself this summer on the Greats, but am beginning to feel like a giant fat spider in a lonely corner. I would be happy with an evening of wine and jokes, of honesty and acceptance, of the warmth of other’s homes and children, of kitchen smells. There, beyond all the great works, I believe I could find Christ where He truly dwells.

Thoughts on Idols and the Dark Night

2011-07-02T12:37:00.000-07:00

I once heard a pastor say, in reference to God's dealings with Old Testament Israel, that God does not come against a people, but against its idols. That is true of the church corporately, but more especially of the individual believer.

In The Dark Night of the Soul, St. John of the Cross relates the seven deadly sins to idolatry of the heart. And these idols are not, as we might expect, idols of gross fleshly indulgence, but idols of the Christian man--sins coated with a religious or spiritual veneer. Let me summarize these, remembering that though St. John places these in the context of Catholic monasticism, they apply to any brand of Christian.

--Pride: self-congratulation over spiritual exercises, ecstatic experiences, and perceived spiritual maturity. Spiritual pride will not allow a man to confess his deepest and grossest sins, and causes him to hang out with like minded folks who look down on the great unwashed masses. A prideful Christian is impatient with his own shortcomings, believing that he should be beyond them already. His acceptance by God is performance based. He resents others when God advances them. Pride's opposite is humility, and love that seeks the advancement of others at one's own expense.

--Avarice: discontent with the level of spirituality that God grants. A Christian afflicted with avarice is constantly seeking counsel, reading to find the secret of spiritual growth, and experimenting with new gadgets that will make him more spiritually mature--a new rosary, a uniquely shaped crucifix, or for Protestants, a new translation of the Bible (the ESV on Kindle!) or anything made from olive wood grown in Israel (especially if it is ornamented with Hebrew script). Avarice's opposite is contentment.

--Luxury: enjoyment of the pleasure of spiritual experience to the point of pursuing feeling rather than God. All friendships, public services, and private devotions are centered on a subjective response. Luxury's opposite is the pursuit of God for himself.

--Wrath: impatience with one's own spiritual growth. It's indicator is anger when times of spiritual fervor or renewal are over, or are taken away. It rises when the Christian believes that others are humiliating him. Wrath also expresses itself by constant irritation with the sins and slow growth of others. Christians who are prone to wrath also look at hardship as proof of God's rejection rather than proof of fatherly discipline. Wrath's opposite is patience.

--Gluttony: overdoing secondary means that bring spiritual growth or experience--fasting, praying, the sacraments, study, silence, etc. Gluttony produces a lack of balance in the use of spiritual disciplines. One sign of its presence is peevishness and being encouraged to moderation by others. Its opposite is just that: moderation.

--Envy: quite simply, displeasure at the virtues of others, and their being praised or advanced by the leaders of the church. Envy's opposite is love.

--Sloth: wanting only spiritual blessing, and avoiding and questioning any hardship. A slothful Christian questions God's will when it crosses his own will, measures himself by himself, and resists discipline. It's opposite is courage.

* * *

We are all familiar with these "spiritual" sins, but less familiar and even frustrated by God's response to them. Let me make the following observations:

First, God wants us wholly for himself, and in order for that to occur, we must learn two truths: we are depraved creatures, unable to save ourselves; and God loves us and gives himself far us beyond our understanding.

Second, an idol is anything from which we gain identity or define ourselves outside God (Neil Silverburg). Much of our Christian experience is simply God casting down our idols.

Third, idols can be, and frequently are, our most dearly held beliefs, practices, and attachments, including church, ministry, and our own practices of devotion and discipline (Bible study, prayer, meditation, fellowship, worship, sacraments, relationships, blogging, and Facebook). God periodically brings us into "dark nights" when none of these things seem to work for us. In such times the soul finds no pleasure outside the knowledge that God is working to be our identity solely.

Fourth, The casting down of idols sets us free.

Thoughts on the Transfiguration

2011-06-11T12:25:00.000-07:00

"After six days Jesus took Peter, James and John with him and led them up a high mountain, where they were all alone. There he was transfigured before them. His clothes became dazzling white, whiter than anyone in the world could bleach them. And there appeared before them Elijah and Moses, who were talking with Jesus. Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here. Let us put up three shelters—one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.” (He did not know what to say, they were so frightened.)
Then a cloud appeared and covered them, and a voice came from the cloud: “This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!” Suddenly, when they looked around, they no longer saw anyone with them except Jesus."

Before I get into this text, I need to define the audience of this blog. Theologically minded Christians will find in the Transfiguration account an exposition of the divine/ human natures of Jesus in one Person, liturgists will find the hidden glory of Christ in the Eucharist, and social action believers will skip the whole episode to get to the deliverance of the demonized boy at the foot of the mountain, for whom this text is but a prelude.

But there are a few folks out there, either Protestant charismatics or Roman contemplatives (and a handful of evangelical mystics), who long for such a revelation of the glorified Christ either corporately or privately. They desire the Presence that transforms, that humbles the flesh-- a foretaste in this life of the final consummation of spiritual union. I am not offering an apologetic for such subjective experiences, but taking them as a given. Those who believe in revelations of the presence of God are my audience.

We in the experiential camp refer to such an encounter as a "mountain-top experience." The term conveys the ideas of light, love, and renewed comprehension of God--all positive notions. But I think we are mistaken. In reality, I can't think of any literal mountain top experience in the Scriptures that was so positive. The people fled from Sinai. Elijah was almost destroyed at Horeb. The prophets of Baal were wiped out at Carmel. And the greatest mountain top experience in history occurred at Golgotha. The experience of the three disciples at the Transfiguration was anything but sweetness and light. The text says they were "frightened." The ESV uses "terrified." They were in fact reduced to a state of (here is a southernism) total discobobulation, if not outright stupidity. Here are some points to ponder if we are to pursue the manifest presence of God.

First, don't push it. The disciples were not present at the Transfiguration because they had fasted and prayed ("tarried") in preparation. It took them totally off guard. Jesus revealed himself to them in such a manner in his own good time, knowing where the disciples were in their spiritual progress. He warned them to keep it to themselves, because his glory could not be understood outside of the context of the resurrection and the ascension. God is in sovereign control of such occurrences and knows the stages of the development of the human soul, and when they will bear proper fruit.

Second, hush. Human beings have an intense need to jabber when encountered with something over their heads--sorta like an urge to tellthe President that you once ran for president of your 7th grade class (and lost). The disciples felt they had to say something. The fact is that they were prostrate outside an incomprehensible conversation between superiors. The disciples were mere spectators, and there was wisdom in accepting the fact.

Third, bear it. In such moments the human soul is aware of only two things: It is more evil than it ever knew; It is more loved than it ever knew (stolen from Pastor Neil). The work of the burning presence of Christ unveiled is far deeper than knowledge. The soul is totally in his hands, and there is no recourse to conventional mental habits, nor is there a context by which to control the Spirit’s work. Bare trust is its only consolation.

Fourth, be still. Peter couldn’t control his urge to do something: “Let’s make some tents.” The idea is so ludicrous--that beings who for centuries had lived in a perfected state learning the mysteries of God needed a place to stay, is embarrassing. Some of Peter’s response is based on the need to cover and control the glory-- lock it up and let it out at intervals--but I think at a deeper level it arose from the need to respond to God with action, residual Performance Based Acceptance. The only true response to a manifestation of Divinity is a yielded heart. No action is called for on the human side; all the action is God’s initiative. Activity blocks the flow of the Spirit's work.

Lastly, such moments are rare, and not the stuff of everyday Christian life. That is why, after the glory of the Transfiguration, God pointed the disciples to Jesus and said, “Listen to him.” The Jesus to whom the Father referred was the Jesus who walked with them and understood their humanity, with whom they could communicate, whose divinity was present but not overwhelming, accommodating their weakness. That, through the Spirit, is the Christ we encounter everyday. The rest is in his plan for us.

Vacation

2011-06-05T17:32:00.000-07:00

Enjoyed our vacation with family at Hilton Head. One of my favorite things was to rise early and go outside to sit and read with a cup of coffee, interrupted by an occasional squirrel or lizard. I'm definitely a morning person. I admit I have some resentment about giving my employer the best hours of my day. By evening I'm not much good, and reading is a real effort at night.

I began to re-read Calvin's Institutes. His negative reputation among evangelicals is a puzzle to me. His work is full of joy at God's creation, and his description of Christ as Mediator (his favorite term for the Lord) is worth the read.

I also tackled The Dark Night of the Soul (St. John of the Cross), a classic of Roman mystical theology. It struck me as I was reading that St. John was describing universal mystical experience, and that a Catholic, an Orthodox, an "exchanged life" Protestant, a Buddhist, or a Sufi could identify with the painful process of moving from the world of sight and thought into the bliss of the Divine Love. Whether the process is looked upon as an attainment of the soul to a higher plane, or (from a Protestant point of view) the struggle of faith to believe that Christ has accomplished all we need for life and godliness, the experience is the same.

As usual on vacations, I contemplated my age and the future. I have a greater peace about both than I did a year ago. The refuge of old thoughts and habits is like an old leaky hut--not much there in the way of substance any more.

"I love thee, O Lord, my strength.
The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer,
my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge,
my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold."

Events and Reviews

2011-05-21T09:37:00.000-07:00

I haven't blogged much lately for a couple of reasons. I believe there's a difference in blogging and journaling. Blogging generally deals with the sharing of ideas; journaling with more internal, introspective, and sometimes private, issues. Most of my thoughts recently are in the second category, suitable for a dog-eared notebook. Also, I am aware that the greatest percentage of my social contacts are electronic, which is troublesome to me. I would give up Facebook, except I find that the "message" function is more efficient and enables me to contact more people privately than regular e-mail. Interesting that Facebook precludes Facetime. "Brave new world, to have such creatures in it." Anyway, here's what's been happening with me recently.

Events: Christ Covenant Church in Sevierville, to which I was connected for eight years, voted this spring to disband. Their last service was on Good Friday. I found this very sad. I had hoped for resurrection in their midst. Goodness knows a lot of people have loved that church and its school and poured themselves into it over the years. I have also had an opposite reaction, something akin to freedom, because it means that the reasons that I came to Sevier County in the first place are no longer there. It makes it easier to be defined by the future instead of by the past.

Another event is the change taking place at Trinity Chapel in Knoxville, where we've been members for the last eight years. Changes in leadership are moving us in a direction that will emphasize house churches, leadership training, and a need for exegetical, expository preaching and teaching. If you know my past, you know that I am salivating over this. I'm trying to heed John Kellogg's word to "be expectant, but don't have expectations," but I do believe there will be a renewal of ministry for me at Trinity. Regardless, we are embedded there.

Reading: Last month I finished Copan's Is God a Moral Monster?, an apologetic for the Old Testament against the "new atheists." I thought the description of the new atheists was more helpful than his defense of the faith. Two things: the new atheists are attempting to prove that non-believers can be just as happy and fulfilled in a world without God as Christians claim to be in a world with him. They proclaim a scientific evolution from which respect, compassion, and a love for beauty emerge. This strikes me as a bit odd, since the heart of evolutionary theory is survival of the fittest--"Nature, red in tooth and claw." Or as Doug Floyd pointed out somewhere, atheists who dwell in a non-metaphysical world are arguing their point from metaphysics.

My own observation about the new atheists is that they are old atheists with a shriller voice. They are angry. Religion is the bane of civilization. Jihad, the crusades, modern evangelism, and (I suppose) Zionism, are all of the same cloth. Fundamentalism in any form is the enemy ("A man who is willing to die for something is also willing to kill for it."). I hear this shrillness filtering down to plain everyday secular folks. It makes calm discussion difficult, and is a little scary.

Copan's defense of the Old Testament God had some good points, but left me feeling like the depths were never explored. He reminded his readers that the Old Covenant was temporary to the point that it was eviscerated. There are some good exegetical studies--but Copan will probably never live down his exegesis of Deuteronomy 25:11-12. It isn't for public consumption. I'll "message" you about it on Facebook if you request it.

I prefer the "Christ is on every page of the Old Testament" approach to reading the Old Covenant. Verne Poythress did some seminal work along these lines in The Shadow of Christ in the Law of Moses (1991), as well as Jim Jordan in Through New Eyes (1988). You can tell by the dates that I am behind the times. There may be more and better expositions of that approach now. I realize it opens a new can of worms (did Jesus wipe out the Canaanites?), but it's the most consistent approach for a Christian. I didn't feel that Copan explored that angle sufficiently.

I also found a copy of Hannah Whitall Smith's The Christian's Secret of a Happy Life in a drawer that has a bookmark in it from Anne's college days. I am wearing a mask as I read it because the dust sets off my allergies. I categorize her with a number of "inner life" authors like Torrey, Murray, Tozier, and, later, Martin Lloyd Jones. I think of them as "pre-charismatic" evangelicals. It interests me that some of them referred to the "Baptism in the Holy Spirit" (see Lloyd-Jones' Joy Unspeakable) without emphasizing charismatic gifts. It's ironic to me that modern evangelicals shy away from this terminology because it might identify them with the Pentecostal/charismatic renewals. There's evidence in the early evangelicals that the "Baptism of the Holy Spirit" is part of their heritage.

The message in Secret is that Christ has done everything for our salvation, and we walk by faith. Utterly simple, and most readily forgotten. I have to be told what amounts to the gospel every day. I would prefer to live in carnality and complacency, or, if I'm sufficiently stirred, slide over into legalism and self -salvation. Only the gospel frees--but we have to preach it to ourselves everyday because the kudzu of performance based acceptance never stops creeping into the dark corners of our lives. This is a great book and needs to be reread every few years.

One last comment: We’re headed for a week at Hilton Head. We have a place at Shipyard. Beth will be with us, and David and Channon will be on the island the first few days. We’ll also spend some time with Anne’s Mom. Beach, book, and Copa de Oro in my morning coffee.

Facebook, Castle Anthrax, and Brother Bob

2011-03-15T17:33:00.000-07:00

I couldn't slow down on this one. It's a bit long. Split up your read if you need to.
My Facebook family has grown over the years. There are three distinct entry groupings: 1) Family. These are fairly innocuous and newsy entries that I sometimes respond to and immediately pass on to my wife to avoid "why didn't you tell me____" when the topic surfaces at the next reunion. 2) My local church family. These are usually various forms of praise to God for a meeting, a speaker, a community event, a concert, or a prayer request. These are written in a code that an evangelical would not understand. Fortunately, over the years I have developed the ability to speak Charismatic. (For instance, possession is not something you own; it is a state of being, and an undesirable one; and deliverance is not a movie.) 3) Everybody else. In this category are old friends, distant friends, and some distant friends of old distant friends. Many, if not most of these are Christians, and of their number many are into something.

By into something I mean that they are committed to some branch of the church, a commitment which makes me suspicious that it some Facebooky way, I am being evangelized. They may think this is effective, but the truth is that I am being evangelized from so many perspectives that they cancel each other out. I lapse into ecclesiastical overload. For every proponent of Orthodoxy there are at least two Calvinists, a handful of Reconstructionists (mostly exposing other Reconstructionists), three or four hard shell Baptists, a couple of pissed off liberals (imagine being emancipated into the socialist utopia by a bunch of grumps), some Anglicans, at least one dispensationalist who is far too exuberant over the death of thousands of Japanese because it means the Soon Return, and somewhere in there is a rather quiet Mormon. Funny--no Catholics, except the one who challenged my definition of "imputation" in an old blog. He wasn't even on my Friends list.

I remember a trip to Port-au-Prince back in the 1980's. I wandered into an indoor market, where I was greeted by a mob of budding capitalists who shoved me, grabbed me, and pushed everything from beads to something resembling a mango into my face. I shouted the only phrase I had learned from discerning missionaries, "Pap Ashte" (roughly: "I ain't buying today"), and fled for the door. For some reason my Facebook experience has triggered this memory. I feel pushed and pulled by a variety of fine folks to whom I respond with Christian charity, Pap ashte. It also has brought to mind Galahad's perils in Castle Anthrax, which in the interest of Christian delicateness I will not describe, but you can probably find it on Youtube. Suffice it to say that Galahad heard many siren voices urging him to stay in the Castle. Also suffice it to say that it was his love for the Grail that brought him into a place of such distraction to begin with. But I digress.

I believe some strange things. I believe all men are connected, not in their humanity, especially fallen humanity, but by the image in which they were created. I believe the Logos enlightens all men to some degree or other, which boils down to saying that there is truth everywhere, broken and incomplete, and sometimes almost destroyed, but there. That means that I expect light and darkness in every man I meet, or read, or "friend" on Facebook. I embrace the truth and am suspicious of the darkness. This is especially true of the way I look at the church. Bluntly: every group has a piece, but none has the whole. That is why we so desperately need each other. That means that the body of Christ is wider and deeper than my experience of it. And I want the best of what each part offers. Of course, because portions of the church are closed to all but full-on communicants, some of us are reduced to a kind of theological pilfering--peeking over the walls and grabbing what we can.

In utter perversity, I lay awake sometimes and work on a novel which I will never write, but the plot fascinates me. The protagonist is a young seminary graduate attending a conservative Presbyterian church. The pastor constantly preaches against the evils of subjectivism and enthusiasm. Being a rebel, our hero sneaks off to a store front charismatic fellowship on Sunday evening. He has an encounter with the Holy Spirit, and becomes a tongue-speaking prophet in that congregation. That pastor in turn preaches against the 3 "r's," religion, repetition, and ritual, all of which are prefaced with "vain." So off he goes to a small Anglican church across town that has a Wednesday night Eucharist. After a few months of practice and study, he develops an understanding and appreciation for the liturgy. He is baptized, receives the laying on of hands, and is confirmed in all three in sequence. Our protagonist asks deeply enigmatic questions, such as: "Will I really be a better tennis player if I join the US Tennis Association?" "If I do join, will they cancel my membership if I secretly play basketball?"

The rest of the book is his attempt to keep Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday evening from touching each other, and the tension builds: narrow escapes, etc. Of course, he is eventually discovered, and is excommunicated from the first two with great indignation. The Anglican priest, being a bit of an Emergent, laughs his head off and then suggests that he drop out of sight to avoid the wrath of the Parish Council. After making promises to behave, he moves to another town. The book closes with him flipping through the phone book looking for the names of churches.

Blasphemous? Rebellious? It does raise certain issues about authority and accountability. But what fun! And why not? The protagonist's constant questions are, "If I am this, why can't I be that?" "If I do this, why can't I do that?" Those are dangerous questions that can tear down walls.

But once again, I digress. Let me return to the original subject. Somewhere back there I was talking about Facebook and evangelism and anthrax. Some final points:

One: Things will never be the same. The age of computer connectedness is upon us, and it is impossible not to be confronted with other ideas, especially where the church is concerned. Gone are the days of hiding in one's own sanctuary and viewing with suspicion those who dwell afar. Ideas are pinging around cyberspace at rates incomprehensible to one who still wants to hide with a book in a quiet place. This is not at all bad. I read somewhere recently (probably Facebook) that Al Queda is ticked off because it is being marginalized in the most recent revolutions in the Middle East. They (so far) have had little to do with the rise of democratic ideas that are passed from laptop to laptop. Borders are increasingly irrelevant. One would think that something similar will happen in the body of Christ.

Two: I can't help it. I love Phyllis Tickle's quadrant. Think of four squares created by a cross in the middle. One square are liturgicals, one consists of social action Christians, another is made up of conservatives (evangelicals), and the fourth are the renewalists (charismatics). At the center, where four corners meet, there is a swirl of conversation and experience that is causing the lines to blur and become indistinct. There's something growing in that mess. She points out in this illustration that a certain number of folks will recoil in horror from this chaos, and retreat, like Dean Smith's Tarheels, into their four corners. It's safe and predictable there. In a gracious openness, she acknowledges the contribution of the corner folks to the security of the others. This is no new concept, and I've blogged about it before. What concerns me today is how pronounced and strong the pursuit of the corners is becoming. The Quest for the True Church has never been healthier. There are just so damned many of them! So one is forced to pick, or to in a supernatural effort confess that he already belongs to all.

Three: I do not want to end with the impression that church membership is some spooky connection to something out there that has no feet, or hands, or heart. Of course the church has a local manifestation--and is most important manifestation of church for the individual believer. And that local expression is deeply cultural. It simply cannot be helped. As long as I live, I will think like a Western man; and more specifically, an American; and most specifically, a southerner. It is not a question of choice, but of birth and conditioning. I have this somewhat exotic notion that the Incarnation includes the capacity of God the Holy Spirit to reach into cultures and speak the language of that culture to its people. I realize that's laying a lot of responsibility on God. But if I must learn think like a 16th Century Englishman, or a Russian, or an Italian in order to find the Light of Christ, I am doomed.

At this point I think of Brother Bob--the (composite) Pastor of Booger Holler Independent Church in Sevier County, TN. Brother Bob is a big man who's worked with his hands all his life and has a raspy voice from shouting hell-fire from the pulpit on the weekends. He comes into our office pushing a snotty-nosed brat who is on probation at our office. He sits the brat in a chair, tells him to shut up, and to obey his probation officer--or every demon in hell will pitchfork his skinny butt for eternity. Now, folks, like it or not, this works. The brat begins to assume some responsibility and clean himself up. And it's not because of demons or pitchforks or the threat of force. It's because for the first time in his life a real man loves him and proves it with his action and his time. And there, in all its power for change, is the gospel. Why, I don't even like the man. He offends my old Anglican sensibilities. But he is what Sevier Countians needs. In their language. In their culture. And it will be different in every county, every region, every nation of the world. But the same Lord, and the same church.

God, Politics, and Humor

2011-02-13T15:16:00.000-08:00

"Vladamir (Putin) had invited (President) Medvedev to visit with us in Sochi, Russia's equivalent of Camp David. The mood was festive. Putin hosted a nice dinner, followed by folk dancing. At one point, members of my delegation, including me, were plucked from our seats to take the stage. The dance felt like a combination of square dancing and the jitterbug. I'm sure I would have been more fluid if I'd had a little vodka in my system. Curiously enough, I rarely saw vodka on my trips to Russia, unlike in the old days of communism."

-George W. Bush, Decision Points

I had originally wanted to report these comments about vodka on Facebook, because it struck me as funny. There was irony in the use of vodka by the Spartan leaders of the old regime, and the lack of it by those we perceive as moving towards democracy and freedom. Humor: nothing more. But knowing my Facebook family, I was afraid that in some cases the humor would be lost, and the name "Bush" and the fact that I am reading his memoirs, would bring some hits from the right and left that would go beyond my desire to merely entertain. So I decided to be preemptive and contemplate politics and humor in a blog.

Let me say in defense of fair balance that I read Obama's The Audacity of Hope just prior to the 2008 elections. (Both books, by the way, were gifts from my daughter.) I found Audacity to be powerful, warm, compassionate, and above all, proactive. It was stirring. But I can't remember laughing one time during my read.

On the other hand, I laughed all the way through Decision Points, and kept interrupting Anne and the Australian Open to read anecdotes and funny personal experiences. It made me think about the nature of humor and politics. So I make the following sweeping generalization: though the right wing in American politics is plenty capable of anger, it still seems to have the capacity to laugh, and even laugh at itself. The left, on the other hand, looks like its caricature of the right--deadly serious about everything, puritanical, smileless, capable of humor only as mockery and sarcasm, and (to paraphrase Don Knotts) grimly spreading liberation around the world like a plague.

Why is this? I think it has something to do with God. Conservatives are, well, conservative. In a culture that has been moving to the left for a couple of generations, they are the foot-draggers and the looking-backers. A conservative today is about where a liberal of 20 or 30 years ago was. And because they are holding on to the past, perhaps as far back as Eisenhower, conservatives still have a memory of the Judeo-Christian tradition. (It also means in another 20 to 30 years we’ll all be a super-serious smileless lot, sourly defeating oppression and championing freedom of choice without a grin.) And while there are Christians on the left (Obama counts himself as one), I believe liberals in general are more comfortable with the Humanist Manifesto than the Bible, and breathe a sigh of relief that we are finally rid of God.

I’ve made a lot of assumptions here, and probably dug myself a deep hole, but my point is not really about politics. It is about the relationship of God and humor. I’ve always been fascinated with why things strike us funny, and I’m no further along than when I first began. That makes me think that humor cannot be understood within the realm of human endeavor alone. There is something transcendent about it--some standard of measurement outside ourselves that makes us think of ourselves as odd or out of step, or connected to some entity that sees us differently. CS Lewis said somewhere that the two greatest proofs of the existence of God are that men don’t like to walk by cemeteries at night, and they like to tell dirty jokes. There’s something about our bodies and the juxtaposition of spirit and flesh in one being that is funny to us. Something is wonderfully delightful about being us, something of heaven and earth are entwined within us, and something is also horribly wrong and unadjusted.

Consider the emotional fruits of confession. Con-fessio: to “say with.” In Greek, homo-logeo: to “say the same thing.” Simply put, confession is telling God what He already knows about us. While confession may bring tears and remorse, it’s final manifestation is laughter--a response to finally getting in step with the rest of the universe. Conversion, repentance, confession, redemption, reconciliation, are all words of laughter. Who cannot be moved with the Psalmist’s observation that “weeping may endure for a season, but joy comes in the morning.”

That leads to an even higher transcendence in laughter. God Himself is joyous. In His barely known essence as Three in One there is constant laughter as the Three enjoy one another. God laughs when He beholds His creation. And in some cosmic sense He laughs at us--not the laughter of mockery, but the laughter that comes from seeing His own beauty and joy reflected back to Him in small, fragile creatures that are capable of reason and feeling. It is Satan who is grim with self-determined purpose and discontent.

So here is a test. If you find the following dull and slightly offensive, or don’t get it, welcome to the left. If it makes you laugh, you are still a foot-dragging remnant of the right:

“Putin and I both loved physical fitness. Vladimir worked out hard, swam regularly, and practiced judo. We were both competitive people. On his visit to Camp David, I introduced Putin to our Scottish terrier, Barney. He wasn’t very impressed. On my next trip to Russia, Vladimir asked if I wanted to meet his dog, Koni. Sure, I said. As we walked the birch-lined grounds of his dacha, a big black Labrador came charging across the lawn. With a twinkle in his eye, Vladimir said, ‘Bigger, stronger, and faster than Barney.’ I later told the story to my friend, Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada. ‘You’re lucky he only showed you his dog,’ he replied.”

Incensed

2011-01-21T16:27:00.000-08:00

My son's new wife has industrial asthma. That means her lungs are extremely sensitive to any particles in the air, from pollution to perfumes. She had a reaction to Anne's hand lotion when we were together over Christmas. We are having to learn to be aware and plan ahead when we see her. There is no question in our minds that love trumps lotion.

Recently the Reformed Episcopal church where David has been a member for years began to use incense in their morning service--which is a total disaster for Channon. After David objected, the vestry met and informed him that the practice would not be changed. This is basically excommunication for a physical inability from the worship of God as the vestry understands it. My son and daughter-in-law will be searching for another church within the same tradition. I love the Anglican tradition, and I love my family, and I’m conflicted. So, here goes.

First: the proper form of the worship of God is the raison d'etre of Anglicanism. The title of Peter Toon's Which Rite Is Right? pretty much sums up the Anglican passion. The nature of true worship trumps (though certainly does not ignore) evangelism, pastoral care, and discipleship. It is difficult to question this passion without appearing to be unconcerned about what pleases God, and frivolous about the depths and majesty of the liturgy. My only response to this is that Jesus gave a two sided answer to the question of what was the greatest commandment--Love God, and Love your Neighbor. It strikes me that worship involves both of these. The Apostle John told us that we cannot love God if do not love our neighbor. When a passion for correct worship negates passion for the development of the human spirit, the balance has been lost.

Second: there is no question that modern American churches (just because they are American) have to contend with "the tyranny of the weaker brother." Members of American churches constantly threaten to leave (with their tithe) over issues like the lighting in the sanctuary and the color of the new bathrooms. It is a power game. Church leaders have to eventually draw some lines, or they will be overwhelmed by democratization, the result of which is always mediocrity. But that is simply not the case here. We are not talking about preference or rebellion against authority, but plain, pure, physical necessity.

Third: there are a host of new Anglican denominations springing up in reaction to the swing to the far left in the older groups, especially ECUSA. These groups have two things in common: they are conservative, and they are, well, new. They are churches longing for continuity with the past who have no past, so they must create it instantaneously. Like Athena, they have to spring from the head of Zeus full-grown, with a history, all in one generation. Members of the REC may object to this characterization, since they are over 150 years old. But the recent attempt to break with their “Presbyterians with a prayer book” reputation, and their attempt to become more Anglican in order to reach disenchanted ECUSA’s, means that they are as “new” as more recent denominations.

Such churches do not have the luxury of real, in-time parish, diocesan, or denominational tradition like the Roman or Orthodox church down the street. They are having to create 500 years of Anglican tradition with a 21st Century generation, and create it quickly. I know whereof I speak. I was an Anglican for ten years. First was the alcohol issue. 16th Century Englishmen had never heard of Carrie Nation, but 21st Century evangelicals have, like it or not. Both parishes that I served gave in to the wine in the chalice/ grape juice in the tray compromise. The incense question was never even raised in my first parish. It was a matter of space. It would have been like firing up a thurible in a bathroom. Choke. Gasp. In the second parish, the rector tried it a couple of times. Those who did the most coughing and spluttering were long-time vestry members. Conviction gave way to expediency. We wanted a congregation (and its leaders) still present when the smoke cleared.

I must admit that I was disappointed. Here was an opportunity to finally do things right. I didn’t leave my past commitments and go through ordination to waffle around with compromise. But there were two major problems. One was the weight of history since the Reformation. We have seen two Great Awakenings, the holiness movement, the pietistic movements, the Pentecostal and charismatic renewals, and now, Emergence is upon us. I am not arguing for the validity of any of these. I am simply saying that history did not stop with Cranmer. Arresting the apex of all true worship in the 16th Century locks the Holy Spirit in that time frame.

The second problem is irritating and profound. The greatest obstacle to creating perfect worship is depraved, recalcitrant, God-loved, forgiven humanity, whose stomachs growl, whose posteriors grow numb, whose knees pop at the altar, whose lungs rebel against smoke, who want lunch and a quiet afternoon at home alone on Sunday with the little woman. Anyone who strives for the perfection of the ancient liturgy is going to have to reckon with this heaving mass of reluctance. Yet it was not the smell of incense, but this mass of sneezing, coughing, gurgling mutineers against all that is sacred that urged the heart of God to Incarnation and Passion. May I dare to say that they are the “real deal” in Christianity. If not, we could just leave the incense burning in the nave and go home, content that God would be honored without all this humanness.

Fourth: What the heck does God think? Well, it is certainly true in the Old Covenant that otherwise true believers were barred from the central worship places because of physical handicaps. God's concern at the time was to emphasize his utter separateness and holiness. Rules for worship trumped personal weaknesses. But now enters the New Covenant. The church moves through Christ from an exclusive stance to an inclusive one. "Do not touch the mountain" becomes "Come unto me, all you who are weary and heavy laden...." Is it possible that the sacrifice of the perfect form for the least saint is an odor more precious in the nostrils of God than all the properly prepared incense in Christendom?

For Us

2011-01-15T10:56:00.000-08:00

If God is for us, who can be against us?

Perception, especially in the Christian faith, is everything. One such perception dawned on me when I read these words in Romans 8 this week. I tend to see God as a stationary Person whom I must approach to find forgiveness, encouragement, or solace. After all, Jesus spoke of himself as the "way," which implies that I must go on a some form of mini-journey to find him.

But for a moment, this verse in Romans pulled back a veil, and I saw things in reverse. I realized that I am not a Christian because I am for God, but because he is for me. We "love him because he first loved us." Or to use spatial language, we believe in him because he first moved towards us.

He moved towards us in the Incarnation. That was wholly his initiative. While the Jews may have prayed for deliverance and for a manifestation of the rightness of their revelation, the actual fact of the Incarnation was startling to the point of offense. And it certainly made no impact on philosophical pagans, for whom salvation was the escape of the spirit from the confines of human flesh.

He moved towards us in the earthly life of Jesus. The Jews defined ritual cleanliness as the opposite of uncleanness--hence the stringent laws about the place (or dis-placement) of lepers in the society. Yet Jesus walked into groups of lepers and touched them. The healing power within him was stronger than the effect of the disease upon him. Reversing the Old Testament principle of defilement, the light of Christ overcame the darkness. And he approached them.

He moved towards us in his cross and resurrection. I don't want to belabor the doctrine of the atonement here; but I want to point out that in these events God the Father made it possible for himself to dwell with and in beings who still struggle with uncleanness and are intellectually finite. A way has been opened for us to fellowship with him as we are, while being changed by it.

The gospel is certainly not something we earn. By definition it is the evangelium, the "good news." And it is good news because it is the initiative of God, his willingness to run to us when we are running from him. Without his initiative, their is no hope of salvation.

We've all seen romantic moments in a movie, or in a commercial, in which a husband gives his wife a gift beyond his means, but which demonstrates his love. Her response: "O George, what have you done?" The question sounds like an accusation. But it is the opposite-- a question based on the joy of experiencing something too good to be true. Incarnation, life, death, resurrection--I found myself asking in my last reading of Romans 8, "O God, what have you done?"

Year's End

2010-12-16T07:44:00.000-08:00

I got up this morning to a sheet of ice over the roads. No way I'm getting to work. So it seemed like a good time to begin on the "obligatory" end of the year review. First, external events.

Four events stick in my mind. In the summer we rented a condo at Hilton Head, which we shared with David and Beth. Had good times on the beach and struggled with a catamaran. The best times were sitting around the table on the deck in the mornings and watching the squirrels and the turtles and sharing with each other. Over the weekend of July 4th Anne and I borrowed her brother's lake house in NC and invited the Kelloggs to stay with us. They mentored us in our younger days. John is in his eighties now, and flies to Africa 3 or 4 times a year. God has opened a wide ministry for him there. His counsel to us has stuck with me: "Be expectant, but lay down your expectations." It takes a lifetime to come to that conclusion.

In October we went to Salt Lake City for a Max conference. Were very busy, and did not see as much of the area as I would have liked. But what we did see was impressive: very clean city with beautiful surroundings and friendly people. We did spend a few hours poking around Temple Square. It gave me a bad case of the heebee-jeebees, seeing the glint in the eyes of true believers and statues of Joseph Smith, et.al. Not to deny the influence of Mormonism on American culture--we stayed in the downtown flagship Marriott. Nice.

The big event of the year was just a couple of weeks ago--David and Channon's wedding. David in our minds is one of the most loving and caring people on earth, and we've prayed for a long time for love in his life and an end to loneliness. This sure seems to be the real deal. We love Channon and look forward to getting to know her better.

As for internal events: I suppose I should divide these into negatives and positives. On the negative side, I have had an ongoing battle with depression this year. It is exacerbated by the fact that depression can be as homey and friendly as an old blanket--all warm and cozy and debilitating as hell. Breaking away from it is like slogging through a swamp to dry land.

I have a plaque in our bathroom that reads, "We crucify ourselves between two thieves: regret for the past, and fear of the future." That pretty well sums in up. I have spent hours analyzing my past, trying to make some sense of events, especially during the last few years. It's a hopeless task. The past can be viewed through so many perceptions that in the end only God knows what it means. I suppose he is much more concerned with the finished product than the chain of events. "Forgetting those things that are behind...."

As for the future--Anne and I did not plan well for retirement (if that is even a value anymore), and the crash of 2008 hurt what we did have. Like most Americans, Social Security will sustain us only at a subsistence level. I see a cliff looming ahead as we get older. I counter this fear by reminding myself that God has never ceased to provide for us any time in the past or present.

As for the present: I enjoy getting up and going to work every day. The best part of my job is my relationship to my fellow workers. We are all supportive and know each other well enough to give counsel. I would miss that if I left. On the other hand, I am more aware than ever that "all men are liars." I am constantly disappointed with our clients--misdemeanor probationers. It's easy to believe that the entire county is hyped up on uppers or downers, is consciously deceitful, and obsessed with an entitlement mentality. Responsibility is a foreign idea. Oxycontin is like candy in the high school. Bottom line: the culture is sick and the judicial system is broken. Deeper bottom line: Jesus really is the hope of the world. Everything else is some kind of delusional band-aid. Feel like I'm
wasting my time and trying to put a good face on it with half-measures.

Well, there's that. On the positive side, Anne and I have enjoyed our experience with Max International this year. Max is a network marketing company that manufactures a supplement that increases the strongest anti-oxidant in the body by 200-300%. Increases energy and retards aging. We've had a good personal experience with it. After the bad experience many of us had with the big "A" in the 1970's, this company has been refreshing. We're impressed with the corporate leadership and with our local team. It is gradually generating some extra income for the coming years.

Of course network marketing can be a bit weird. Large numbers of associates are Christians--and network marketing by its nature can take on the earmarks of the church. There are apostolic fathers, mentors, discipleship, enthusiastic meetings, and evangelistic techniques, plus a payoff in material blessings. There is a thin line between a business that applies biblical principles and a cult. A thin line that I intend to keep an eye on.

And on the positive side, there is Jesus. Light of the world who meets me every morning. He is solid and "there." Buber's Thou. Increasingly the world system around me is becoming meaningless, and he is becoming the source of all meaning. There just isn't any meaning or purpose anywhere else. There is great joy in him, and I know it would increase if I ceased to grieve for the passing away of the world. Thanks to contributors to that joy this year: the elders of our church, Solzhenitsyn, Oswald Chambers, Fr. Steve Freeman (great blog), Alexander Schmemann (For the Life of the World), John Kellogg, Anne's love, David's caring, Beth's wisdom, all Facebook friends, and my co-workers. What a hodge-podge of God's mystery and delight!

Merry Christmas, everybody.

The Gates

2010-12-13T14:16:00.000-08:00

Just finished reading John Connolly’s The Gates, a book for older children (and adults). In it the powers of hell try to invade earth by a combination of clumsy witchcraft and the Hadron Particle Collider—science and demons intertwined in ways that are reminiscent of warnings from CS Lewis.

Connolly is a word master and just plain funny. Here is a sample:

Nurd, the Scourge of Five Deities, sat on his gilded throne, his servant Wormwood at his feet, his kingdom spread before him, and yawned.

“Bored, Your Scourgeness?” inquired Wormwood.

“Actually,” said Nurd, “I am extremely excited. I cannot remember the last time I felt so enthused about anything.”

“Really?” asked Wormwood hopefully, and received a painful tap on the head from Nurd’s Scepter of Terrible and Awesome Might for his trouble.

“No, you idiot,” said Nurd, “Of course I’m bored. What else is there to be?”

Connolly blows off God in the first couple of chapters, caricaturing him as an old man with a beard who created the world in seven days, and in whom no self respecting person with a knowledge of science can believe. Then he goes on to give a description of hell as another dimension attempting to break into ours. Why heaven cannot be making a similar attempt he does not say.

Connolly’s Satan (The Great Malevolence) hates mankind with a perfect hatred—because men are happy and productive and love flowers. Man as man is the object of his scorn. The biblical notion that Satan hates man because of the Image he reflects is not on Connolly’s radar. Here is a repeated theme of the modern novel—Satan without God, hell without heaven, and evil resisted and overcome by man without any help from You-Know-Who.

Heaven still manages to sneak into the book through the back door, however. In the end, a child’s courage saves the world, along with a demon who joins the forces of light and sacrifices himself to save the others. Child-like faith. Conversion to the other side. Self-sacrifice. Hmmm. Truth pervades all art worth the name, maybe even against its will.

Still a fun read!

To Life

2010-11-19T17:41:00.000-08:00

You must be born again.
I have come that they may have life, and have it more abundantly.-Jesus

Old things have passed aways; behold, all things are made new.-St. Paul

"L'Chaiim"--"to life!" The Old Testament spoke of life as an experience, not as an abstract principle that could be separated from physical existence. Life for the Hebrew was holistic, because all of life came from God, and was seamless because it had a unified center.

The Greeks, on the other hand, needed two words to encompass "life." Bios was the favored word. It meant "living" in the sense of "livelihood," and at a higher level meant "life-style" or manner of living. It had philosophical implications. What is the "good" life? How does one find the good, the true, and the beautiful? How does one lead a temperate, well-balanced life? What is the place of truth and virtue, of honor and duty? These phrases remind us not only of the ancient Greeks, but of their Enlightenment descendants, the "Renaissance men," and the southern gentlemen that were part of my own youth.

The other term for life was Zoe--a word with a more scientific nuance. It meant life, not as a value or a quantity of virtue, but life as opposed to death, animate as opposed to inanimate, flora and fauna as opposed to earth and rocks. Zoe was simply defined and discernible. Bios required exploration and was a complex concept. Bios was the preferred term when discussions about existence became serious. It was the term for philosophical speculation.

Yet when Jesus and the New Testament broke into a culture that had been under Greek influence for three hundred years, the two terms were turned on their heads. Bios at its best meant "making a living," and at its worst a dead pursuit of arrogant and self-centered man (Luke 8:14, 2 Tim. 2:4, 1 John 2:16). Zoe was their chosen word for "life," and it pervaded the words of Jesus in the Gospels. He dismissed bios as the hopeless quest of men who did not need to be reformed, or disciplined, or cleaned up--they were instead men who needed to be resurrected, brought from death to life. Jesus proclaimed the joy of an alien life, a restoration of the chaiim that flowed between God and man, between gift and thankfulness in the first garden.

Alexander Schmemann pointed out somewhere that when Jesus was crucified, all the hope that had ever been in bios died. Man at his best chose to kill God. The cross was the suicide of bios. The placard above his head represented the great cultures of his day: the power of military might and shrewd administrative ability of the practical Roman mind; the philosophical Greeks; and the peak of monotheistic revelation, the chosen ones, the apex of morality broken into ten thousand minute fragments--all conspired to destroy God in the name of saving bios. Its salvation was its death.

Zoe is the life of God in his creatures, placed in fallen man by the Holy Spirit. That is not quite saying it right. Because zoe is not an abstraction, it is a Person--God united with man through Christ in a union that was meant from the beginning. Adam lost that union when he chose to pursue the life that came from God without God--and broke the world into life as an end in itself, and life as religious duty--sacred and secular (Schmemann).

The past pulls us back into bios; the future draws us forward to zoe. Bios is spoken in the indicative; zoe uses the imperative and the subjunctive (Rosenstock). Bios abstracts; zoe is relational. Bios is a given, something into which we are born; zoe is a gift. It can only be received, not earned. But zoe can be neglected, and must be fed. Objectively, that is done by word and sacrament in the church (John 6:35), and subjectively by seeing the life of God in all things, from the glimpse of the image of God in broken people, to the utility of computer files. Zoe desires to wake the trees and give the beasts a rudimentary ability to speak (CS Lewis, Randy Alcorn). It is released, above all, by thankfulness for all things, suffering as well as pleasure.

I must admit that I have never heard (or preached) a sermon on the topic. I am afraid we evangelicals are guilty of leading people to a zoe encounter with the risen Christ, followed by a lifelong rehearsal of the rules and principles that govern the bios of the church. Or as Paul said, “having begun in the Spirit, are you now made perfect by the flesh?”. “We (evangelicals) begin with Christ” said Neil Silverburg, “and we end with Moses.” We pass out band-aids in full view of an empty tomb.

Personally, I am a bit tired after 67 years of seminars on Christian principles, how to be a man, how to adjust my finances, how to love my wife, how to raise my children, how to, how to...all commendable things, which have not been unhelpful. But my heart wants joy more than knowledge, exuberance above principles, relationship above all else.

There are, of course, dangers in what I am saying. One is that we don’t take bios seriously enough, which leads to mystical hedonism, the view that, since I am a new creation, what the “old man” does is his business. So I can let lust, greed, and rage loose, because that is not who I really am. Paul was accused of holding such a position, and answered simply with, “God forbid!” Paul also pointed out that whatever enslaves you is your true master.

The other is taking bios too seriously, or morbid involvement. I think of an old friend who wanted to ride in an ambulance so he could face “real” life. Morbid involvement is based on the fear that, if we get too enthralled with zoe, we will lose touch with the world. The truth is that zoe calls us to carry life into everything we touch. (The Jews fled from lepers lest they be made unclean; Jesus walked into their midst, touching them and overcoming their uncleanness with his own zoe.) Zoe is simply a word describing how we were originally meant to live, in love with man and with nature, and sharing with God as we go.

There may be reasons why evangelicals lapse from an exciting honeymoon to the drudgery of married life (speaking metaphorically). I think the central one is their emphasis on the work of the cross. Of course life springs, perhaps above all, from the cross. But it also springs from the incarnation, the resurrection, and the ascension. “Christ was born to die” is an evangelical mantra, and a travesty. Christ was born to live, to touch humanity, to die, to rise, and to reign forever at the right hand of the Father, and to bring us up to where he is. Those are all sources of zoe, which is another way of saying that Christ is the fountainhead of all life.

“In him was life, and the life was the light of men.”

Planetary Consciousness

2010-09-26T12:32:00.000-07:00

The service of the land is an inexorable duty laid upon Man, and it is surprising that it was not included in the Ten Commandments. The reason must be that it was prior to the Commandments, since it was already decreed in Genesis that Adam was put into Eden to dress it and to keep it, and that Man was given dominion over the Earth and all its creatures for that purpose. In attaining planetary consciousness we come back again to this primordial commandment; we have now to dress and to keep the planet, the whole planet.

-Eugen Rosenstock, “Planetary Man”

Several years ago I stated in a blog that there is a tension, maybe even a contradiction, in my outlook as an American citizen and my outlook as a Christian. I want to pick up that theme again.

As a citizen, I am somewhere to the right of the Constitution Party. Because I affirm the doctrine of original sin (I might as well say total depravity), I believe government should be small and controlled by intricate systems of checks and balances--within by the classic balance of its own powers (judicial, legislative, etc), and without by other spheres or institutions, notably the church and the family. Add to this the balance of central and local governments. I have no doubt that the collapse of the balance of powers in our culture is on the increase, and government is no longer protector, but nanny and priest. I am delighted to see groups like the Tea Party, who are trying to articulate a building frustration. If their cry becomes articulate, there will be hell to pay for one side or the other. Big government scares me, and talk about world government raises specters that would make the Lubyanka cringe. In fact, to me the words world or planet are spooky in themselves.

And there seems to be an inevitability in the whole process. One-world market and one-world communications transcend political boundaries, and perhaps pave the way for the politicians to catch up, and open the door for the inexorable rise of anti-Christ. The solution for Rick the citizen is to hold to the past. I read somewhere that the Church of the Middle Ages saw its very existence as an inhibitor of the rise of the Beast--a persuasive argument for its perpetuation. We certainly have our Protestant, evangelical, dispensational version of the same scenario. Preach the gospel, maintain limited government, resist socialism, affirm isolationism, curtail world-wide anything, and we will not be dragged into the future horrors of the Great Tribulation. Two things stand out in this agenda: the believer and the citizen become one and the same, and the past is our hope and the future our nemesis. With those realizations, the Christian in me parts company with the citizen.

In passing, it is worth pointing out that all good things come of God, and all good things are counterfeited. One-world market and communications have brought great good for man in the sovereign purposes of God. But that is an issue for another time. My real concern is with the Christian attitude towards the future. The past helps me find and know myself among others with their own pasts, but the future is what draws me and ultimately defines me. If the future is the perfect, then it draws what is not yet perfect into itself. The eschaton will reveal who I really am, and the future man who is already born in me struggles towards it and will never be fulfilled without it. That means that the Incarnation was not only God entering human space, but the future entering human time and calling us forward. The first Coming was not just a promise, but a seed, of the second. How can I possibly want to hold it at bay?

I began this blog with a quote from Rosenstock, to which I should probably turn my attention. Here is a Christian using a term that is worthy of Hilary Clinton: "planetary consciousness." Rosenstock realized as early as the 1940's that political barriers were hazing, and that "we can no longer sacrifice ourselves to dale and grove, nor to the idol of Western Civilization, nor to upholding the schism between Western and Eastern Christendom, nor to European hegemony...." Many things of the past will die or drop off as God calls the world into the future, parallel to the transformation that occurs in each individual Christian in microcosm. Doubtless rebellious man will counterfeit God's plan. But that should not stop us from longing for the time that the lion lies down with the lamb and a little child leads us. In fact, "longing" is too weak a word. "Taking responsibility" for the earth that groans for the manifestation of the sons of God is a better term.

Taking responsibility may include thinking "green," and taking part in movements that lift human oppression, but I believe that it primarily means accepting the fact that we Christians are already part of a planetary movement known as the church. The West is no longer the model for Christendom. There are mass conversions in South America and India. There are miracles in Africa. The Chinese church is full of a power that puts the West to shame. The American church is looking for a new expression of itself (or resisting it). There is a foment going on that requires looking forward, not backwards. The future is pulling, and pulling; and it is glorious, and not our enemy.

So back to the original point: here I am, stuck between past and future, pessimism and optimism, and hoping the two resolve themselves, or flow together in a way not yet foreseen. For the time being I'll live with it.

Thoughts on Family, Sex, and Marriage

2010-09-09T16:14:00.000-07:00

It is obvious that American culture has gone through a massive shift in family and sexual values for the last decades. It is also obvious that the church is not dealing with the changes well. She is either following the culture or looking longingly to the 1950’s and hoping to turn back the clock. Being “conservative” is merely foot-dragging. Are there any positive things she can do to strengthen her own view of the sanctity of marriage and family? Here are some thoughts.

Number One: The church can no longer depend on the culture or the status quo to confirm its faith, because cultural values and family are no longer vitally inter-connected.

In The Origins of Speech, Rosenstock took issue with most anthropologists, who believe that primitive tribes were formed by associations of family groups seeking security and protection. Rosenstock reversed this order. He believed that tribes saw the family as a necessary means of creating, first, sexual order. No man could have any woman he wanted at any time, without chaos and fighting among males. Tribes also found that incest and rape produced poor offspring. The result was the rise of family groups with taboos against incest in particular. But, second, and at a deeper level, tribes discovered that the family was the best means for propagating the values of the culture. The best citizen was also a good father, whether it was a Roman patrician passing on the rules of the Republic to his children, or an Amazonian tribesman showing his son how to artfully shrink an enemy’s head; and the culture pressured parents to fulfill this role.

I question if this connection still holds in America. Children are taught cultural values by mass media and by the public school, values which may or may not be those of their parents. I have wondered if there are initial and confirming rites in secularism as there are in most world religions, and I’ve decided that the first day of school and graduation fit the bill. Mommy takes junior to the bus and turns him over to the state to arrange his values to the cultural norm, and the state turns him loose to be a model citizen at the end of the process. I am desperately biting my tongue so as to not make a moral judgment at this point; I just want to point out that the family is not necessary to the culture for the propagation of its values. That means that defining “family” is no longer important to cultural survival. It also means that the accompanying sexual mores are not governed by survival pressures. Now the individual is free to choose family style and sexual preference without a larger societal frame of reference. This is not to say that large numbers of people will not opt for the security and commitment of family life—but it is an option, not a requirement for passing the culture's values to the next generation.

The church, therefore, must determine if the family (even more than clergy, doctrine, and programs) is still her primary means of propagating her values, and if so, how to perpetuate those values in a religious sub-culture that is voluntary. There will be very little outside support.

Number Two: The church needs to define “marriage” for its members.

The definition of marriage will be different than the culture’s, because it will presuppose the existence of God—a God who is in his triune relationship an archetype for the family, and because it presupposes a Christ who looks at his church as his bride.

If the Persons of the Trinity are committed to one another in love, and if Christ calls the church into union with himself, then marriage, as a mirror of the archetypes, is a lifelong covenant, made before God and the church. The members of that covenant will be changed and grow in love within it, until death. All covenants, by the way, have sacramental rituals that seal or validate them—from dinner after signing a business contract, to baptism and the Eucharist as the sacraments of our union with Christ. I believe that sex is the sacramental seal of marriage vows—initially on the wedding night (parallel to baptism), and repeatedly afterwards (parallel to the Supper). That doesn’t mean that sex can’t be fun, or earthy, or even fumbled. It does mean that there is a serious commitment hovering behind it. It’s interesting that the Old Testament penalty for pre-marital sex was marriage (if you’re going to act married, then so be it), while the penalty for adultery (covenant breaking) was death. This understanding of marriage and sex of course has no meaning without a sound faith in the blessed triune nature of God and Christ’s passionate love for his church. Those positive truths need to be taught and lived before young believers early and consistently. They lay a much better foundation than saying, “Don’t have sex before marriage or God will be mad at you.”

3. The church needs to take seriously Paul’s admonition in 1 Corinthians 7:9, “It is better to marry than to burn.”

First, “burning” is not an innately evil thing to be shunned, not should it be confused with lust. “Burning” is Paul’s word for normal sexual desire. Lust is its perversion. Lust is to sex what gluttony is to eating, drunkenness to a glass of wine, and rage to anger. “Burning” is a real force that is not going to be suppressed or treated like some kind of teen-age disease in moralistic sermons.

Second, the church opts for the wrong side in the present conflict between the biological and economic clocks. In Old Testament times, these clocks were synchronized. A young man learned a trade, usually in the context of the family business, and was able to be self-sufficient at the same time his libido was peaking. This is not true today. Middle and upper class young people will be in their upper twenties before they finish their master’s, or their residency, or grad school, etc. The church consistently follows the culture and says “wait.” The church is biased against young marriages—an admission that she has not adequately instructed her children. She offers no solution to “burning.” But she will certainly cluck with disapproval if the young find ways to alleviate the pressure. This is a clear rejection of apostolic counsel. That means that the church will have to support young marriage and weave the economic clock into it, not the other way around.

The Grail

2010-08-17T17:34:00.000-07:00

This past weekend I re-watched The Fisher King with Jeff Bridges and Robin Williams. It's one of my favorite movies. Williams plays a college professor turned into one of New York's homeless as the result of a tragedy in his life. He tells the following story, which may or may not be true to the Arthurian legend, but certainly defines the Christian ministry (and I am paraphrasing). I don't believe I can add to it:

"When the king was a boy, he went into the forest to seek his destiny. During his time there, he was given a vision of the Holy Grail, and accepted as his life's mission the quest to find it. Over the years, after many disappointments, the king became discouraged and more reclusive. It seemed he would never find the Grail, and would end his life a failure.

"One day the court fool came in the king's quarters, and being a simple man, did not see a king, but a man in deep emotional pain. He asked, 'What may I do to help you with your pain, sire?' The king answered, 'You can pour me a drink of cool water.'

"The fool reached for a cup, and filling it with water, handed it the king. As he sipped, the king suddenly realized that it was the Grail he was holding, and that it had been in his chamber all that time.

"The king said, 'I've sent my brightest and bravest men to search for this. How did you find it?' The Fool laughed and said 'I don't know. I only knew that you were thirsty.'"

The Doors (or Dancing with Runes)

2010-07-14T17:33:00.000-07:00

The humanoids of the dry and desert planet Mortopia formed a primitive culture based on a constant quest for food and water. However, after the discovery that a life-sustaining lichen that grew on the shady side of desert rocks could be cultivated and packaged in various forms, the Mortopians evolved into a medium-status culture with some economic complexity and a small but wealthy intelligentsia. They divided their history into pre-lichen and post-lichen eras. Mortopian society stayed pretty much at the same level, with very little excitement, until the coming of the age of the Doors.

The Doors were discovered by a lad herding a flock of g'malim, a camel-like mammal about the size of a terrestrial goat. Stumbling over an outcropping of rocks, he came into a flat sandy valley with barren hills on both sides. And there they stood: two doors upright in the sand, unweathered and reflecting the rays of the large orange sun of that world. They would become the object of puzzlement and intense study for coming generations, and also the subject of much debate, division, and argument, especially among Mortopian scholars, whose opinions attracted a following among the lower classes.

The Doors were double, like French doors, meeting in the middle, with golden handles on each door. No attempt to open them or pull them apart or uproot them succeeded. They stood approximately 20 feet high and 20 feet across, each door being 10 feet wide. Whether they had been placed there, or emerged from the sand, or had been there all along in an inhospitable lost valley, no one knew. What material they were made of was unknown. The handles were on the side of the Doors facing east. The backside of the Doors had no handles, suggesting that they could only be opened from the east side. There was a plain horizontal panel midway across both doors, front and back, forming four equal sections on each side, or a total of eight sections. And each section was covered with symbols and runes.

Over time, the Doors became the domain of scholars, who erected scaffolding and ladders in order to study the raised lettering on the eight sections. The west side (or back) was found to be covered with pre-lichen runes, while the east side (or front) contained a more recent script. Translation revealed a collection of myths relating to the desert gods, interwoven with stories of a land of bright sun and green grass. There were also basic rules about living and relationships, and stories about ancient heroes and commoners who had adventures in the bright-sun world.

Scholars began to find within the sub-units of the eight major sections certain discrepancies and nuances that made them different from other sections. Schools of thought began to form around the major sections and their sub-units. Certain scholars became experts within these schools, and gathered disciples or apprentices who worked with them at the site or helped them in translation and the defense of whatever world-view the master scholar espoused. Arguments would often arise at the site of the Doors, sometimes to the point of violence, and at times among the greater population which was divided over which master to follow. This difficulty subsided when the masters and apprentices of the schools stayed on their own scaffolding and pretty much ignored all the others. The population followed suite. This uneasy peace persisted until the morning of the fateful Grand Opening.

On that particular mid-summer morning, as the sun rose to throw orange rays across the huts and scaffolding of the resident scholars, there was a loud crack, and the Doors slowly began to open, stopping a few inches apart, and leaving a gap just big enough for a man to walk through. Early risers jumped from their perches about the Doors and fled to a safe distance to watch. Others emerged from their huts to see what all the excitement was about. Bright, silver sunlight flowed from the opening, and those who were brave enough to hazard a peek saw a rich green lawn sloping down to a tree-lined river, with hills in the distance, and beyond, the hint of mountains in the mist. Some scholars fled behind the Doors, and discovered that the gap from that side only revealed the desert of their homeland. The new world could only be seen from the east side.

The whole experience was disconcerting. Some tried to push the Doors closed, to no avail. Some of the younger apprentices, who still had a sense of adventure, wandered into the bright land and did not return. Most of the resident scholars simply tried to ignore the opening and continue their work. Of course, news of this development spread, and in a few weeks pilgrims were making journeys to the Doors to see this phenomenon. Soon a small town grew up around the site, offering food and lodging to visitors, and selling souvenir replicas of the partly opened Doors and postcards showing the silver light shining across the desert floor. Occasionally a pilgrim would approach the gap and disappear into the light within—usually after being begged by family members to reconsider. The most alarming incidents occurred when one of the older scholars would lay down his notebook and stylus, climb down the scaffolding, and walk directly into the gap with a strange smile on his face.

After a few months, some of those who had gone through the doors began to reappear. But their answers to curious questions were enigmatic, and they were always in a hurry to return. Their only reason for reappearing, apparently, was to call those around the Doors to come back with them into the gap.

One was a ruddy youth with deep blue eyes, red hair, and a scattering of freckles across the bridge of his nose. He had been apprenticed to a master scholar who was an expert in the fourth sub-quadrant of the third sub-unit of the second section on the front side. He was approached by his master, and the following conversation took place:

“Where have you been, my boy, and what have you been doing in there?”

“I have been enjoying the light, master, and dancing with the runes.”

“You mean there is knowledge of the runes in there? You mean that you have been learning the runes and obeying them?”

“No sir. I said I have been dancing with them.”

“Too much unnatural sunlight has touched your mind, my son. You know you can’t dance with an idea or a commandment.”

“O, they’re not ideas, sir. They’re people--people who are the creaturely expressions of what the runes teach. Without them the runes are merely floating concepts. The Doors only portray word pictures of them. They come out of the woods at night and dance with us. They are teaching us, I think, to become runes ourselves.”

“The light has caused your imagination to run wild, my boy. But tell me, if you dance with runes, what do they tell you of their differences? Which rune is the true one?”

“They are all true, master. I told you they dance—a great intricate dance—and I told you they are people. How can one person be truer than another?”

‘No, son. You’ve missed the point of my question. Which one of the interpretations of the runes is the right one?”

The boy hesitated, working this question in his mind. Finally he replied, “I’m having trouble answering, master. The category ‘right’ does not apply in the sun-bright land. No one is right, no one is wrong. There is only the dance.”

The master could not compute this response, so he tried a different approach. “So…what do you do there, I mean, with your time?”

“I told you, master, we dance. Every night. The dance is so complicated that we novices move about in the outer ring until we learn the steps that will take us closer to the center. The runes are in the middle, and their differences form a unity. But we do other things. We sing. And we tell stories—wonderful stories, personal stories, stories of defeat and victory. No one thinks anyone else’s story is unimportant. The runes also tell us their stories. And we laugh a lot.”

“You keep talking about people,” said the master. “But surely there are ideas in that world. Surely you must have scholars—great thinkers who are capable of abstraction—who interpret the runes.”

“Yes, master. But only the very old enter the abstract world. In the sun-bright land abstract thought is a privilege to be earned. Occasionally a gray-beard will disappear into the woods alone, and come back days later, exchange knowing glances with others of his age, and walk away shaking his head and laughing to himself. Once I got up the nerve to ask an elder about this practice. ‘Oh my wee one,’ he chuckled, ‘One must be deep in love and joy, and know his place in the dance, before he can think the Thoughts. Abstraction is the reward of a life lived, not the basis of it. That is why it is a forbidden fruit to those too young to have learned courage.’”

At this, there was the short burst of a child’s laughter from inside the Doors. The youth looked around uncomfortably, and said, “I must really be going, master. The dance begins at twilight. But look, come with me. There are greater than I that can answer your questions.”

A look of joy, quicker than the bat of an insect wing, passed over the master’s face, but then he said, “Perhaps later, my boy. You know how important it is that I finish the research on my next dissertation. It is important that my disciples understand the intricacies of the Quest for the True Rune.”

“But the True Rune is a person!” Seeing his master already ascending his scaffold to his accustomed place, the boy walked slowly back to the gap and disappeared into the light. The conversation was over.

After that, things continued pretty much business as usual. People sporadically passed through the gap in the Doors in both directions. The scholars who worked on the front quadrants were often distracted by the light, and tried several means to cover it up. Boards hung from the scaffolding seldom worked. Finally, one of them hit upon a contraption made of wooden frames and a thick fabric curtain that could be rolled in front of the gap. It blocked the light, but allowed passage by folding the curtain aside. The only distraction after that was the unpredictable laughter from behind the curtain. Some scholars dealt with this by stuffing pieces of cloth in their ears while they worked. The ruddy youth did not reappear. The master finished his dissertation and began a new one entitled “The Quest for the Historical Rune.” It made quite a splash in scholarly circles until a rebuttal was written by a master on the west side of the doors who proved definitively that all runes were merely a projection of the Mortopian psyche.

Thoughts on Renewals--Again

2010-06-25T07:51:00.000-07:00

I fear I am entering that phase of my life in which I merely repeat myself. This entry is another approach to a topic that I rehash and rethink every few months.

The only success I’ve had in ministry was in a charismatic fellowship. I am a charismatic. I would rather hang out with them than any other brand of Christians. I know the language and its nuances, and I remember the glory days of the 1960s and 70’s.

The miracles and excitement of those days appear to be resurfacing in our local church. But I have apparently been warped by other experiences and movements, because I have a certain reticence about it all. Some of that is native (I might as well say sinful)—the usual reluctance to answer the altar call when people are falling out under the power of the Spirit—I go forward just because I need to conquer my self-consciousness. I also have to confess a bit of envy. No one falls down when I pray for them—a mark of anointed leadership within the movement.

So there they are. Selfishness and envy. Having admitted those, let me confess an even deeper habit of standing outside the movement (both historic and current) and looking at it in a broader context—a habit that I have not yet decided is a gift, or mere judgmentalism, a worse sin that the others. I don’t know yet. Anyway, here is a rehash of thoughts about renewals that float through my head, usually on my way home from church.

First: God likes to do New Things. The charismatic movement is fifty-three years old. I remember reading about Smith Wigglesworth’s vision of the ocean: every new wave broke against the retreat of the previous one. Wigglesworth’s point was that movements often resist a new wave, and even create a reaction that brings the new forth. This is a difficult thing to bring up, because no one professes to long for a new movement more than charismatics. But the fact is that a charismatic vision for a new movement consists in a repetition of the old familiar phenomena. This is a blind spot. I remember visiting Pentecostal churches during the high days of the charismatic movement. The manifestations in both groups were similar, but there was a nuanced difference. The charismatic meetings were fresh and exciting; the Pentecostal meetings felt stale and old—“free” forms had become a learned ritual, and there was a sense of “we have arrived and sooner or later you’ll do it our way.” We need to remember that the charismatic movement is as old as Pentecostalism was when the charismatic movement broke out. It would be easy to fall into the same mindset.

I am not yet convinced that the New Thing is upon us. It may be the Emergent Church. It’s too early to tell. Right now I perceive Emergence as more of a reaction than a positive movement. It is still trying to find its voice. But whatever occurs next, it will probably contain something that offends charismatics. That is why we need to keep our eyes open and be aware of that fact. What can be newer that healing, deliverance, and salvation? Perhaps new forms, but definitely something wonderful, something outside the box. I don’t want to miss it.

Second: Renewalists describe church history in terms of renewals. That means that charismatics view the dry times between renewals as, well, evil. They are our fault. If we would pray more or be more zealous, or return to our first love, renewal would reoccur. The assumption is that perpetual renewal is normative for the church, and the lack of the normative is a human failure. I take issue with that at a personal level. My life in Christ (from my side) is more like a mountain road with high views, and low valleys without much vision past the next step (the classic kataphatic/apophatic tension). Neither the high nor the low has taught me to walk with Jesus; but their combination has. High times give vision; low time increase endurance and strength. I believe the same is true of the church. To repudiate low or “dry” times as a wasteland between the really important high points wipes out opportunities for the church to stretch her faith. It may be that the Lord is closer to her at those times than she realizes.

Third: There is a relationship between the church and culture. The first Great Awakening transformed the areas in which it occurred. Taverns emptied. The morality of those areas coincided more readily to a biblical standard. There was also a connection between the abolition movement within the evangelical community and the preaching of later Awakenings. In light of that, I have wondered from time to time how much influence the charismatic movement has had on American culture. To be fair, the Great Awakenings were revivals in which numbers of people converted to Christ, while the charismatic movement would be more accurately called a renewal within the church. Nevertheless there has been little lasting effect by the movement on government, economics, social issues (other than abortion), or the arts.

While there have been positive changes in American culture during the last fifty years, especially in relation to civil and women’s rights, my observation as a Christian is that traditional morality has declined significantly and secular humanist ethics have increasingly dominated since the 1950’s (everybody say “duh!”). It is interesting that this decline has coincided with the life span of the charismatic movement. Nothing in the movement slowed the death of biblical morality. I have a suspicion, which may get me in hot water, that there is a latent Gnosticism among charismatics that separates between Christ as Lord of my inner experience and Christ as Lord of nations and cultures. Many thinking charismatics have struggled with this conflict, and may be helped along their way to cultural change by other Christians, particularly in the Reformed camp. I hope that in the next Move of God the life of the Spirit spills out into the surrounding culture, producing not a renewal, but a Reformation.

In Defense of my Job

2010-06-11T11:41:00.000-07:00

When I was sixty years old, I found myself out of work and looking for a job. The folks at the local probation office had mercy on me, hired me, and eventually moved me into the role of intake officer (seeing probationers for their first visit after court) and Community Service Coordinator (working with local non-profits and hooking up probationers who have been ordered community service with the proper work site). Our office deals with misdemeanor offenders who are sentenced in General Sessions (County) Court. Common offenses are DUI, Possession of Drugs, Shoplifting, and Domestic Assault. I like what I do, and I like the people I work with. They are committed professionals who care about each other and about the people that make up their case loads. However, we are not always perceived that way. More often the profession is regarded with suspicion and even contempt. Here is my response as an “outsider” who wandered into the probation office from another vocation.

A probation office is sort of like a garbage truck. Everyone wants us to do our job, but they don’t want us parked next door. We are perceived as tainted. That may be true of all law enforcement agencies—guilt by association. The equivalent would be fear of a doctor because the diseases he treats may rub off on other patients. I tried several times to get our local newspaper to do a human interest story on some of our successes, or on the service provided to the community through the work of probationers at the local food bank and rescue ministry. Whenever I called, the reporter ignored my request and began immediately digging for dirt. Apparently, only an article that fed the negative perception of our office was newsworthy. I gave it up.

The negative perception of the probation office can be summed up in three statements, to which I want to respond.

1) “I don’t have time for this crap.” Translation: “Probation is a way for local government to harass and oppress me.” The assumption behind this statement is that probation is a right, not a privilege. It has been a common practice in most counties for so long, that it is perceived this way. But in reality, probation is an alternative to 30 days to twelve month’s jail time. It allows the convicted offender to stay with his family, maintain employment, and provide some form of pay-back service to the community which he has in some form endangered. Those who complain about having their lives interrupted seldom consider the alternative. Neither, apparently, does a segment of the community.

2) “It’s all about money.” Well, in some ways, it is. Our office uses electricity, buys equipment, rents a building, and pays employees. (Case workers of any kind, by the way, are on the low end of the American pay scale. No one goes into such a profession for the money. Most of them are idealists.) All probation offices in Tennessee, whether private or part of a county system, charge probationers a fee that is set by the state Board of Probation. Some folks see this as unjust. I have had clients tell me that “the government should pay for this.” My response is, “Friend, I am the government.” In other words, if a probation office does not collect fees, it will come out of the pockets of local taxpayers. How about a referendum in Sevier County to see how local citizens would feel about that? Let me add here that there is a process for truly indigent probationers to have this fee waived by the court.

3) “My probation officer is mean.” Law enforcement philosophy in our culture has two poles: retribution and therapy. Is justice a matter of punishment, or an opportunity to change lives for the better? Most court systems and their probation offices walk the middle ground between the two. Either way, the job of the probation officer is to see that the probationer completes his court ordered obligations, which may include retribution (such as trash pick-up) or therapy (such as addiction treatment). Failure to complete obligations will result in a violation of probation, which means the probationer will be back in court and face even more severe obligations, often jail time. That means that, if the officer presses the probationer to complete his obligations, that pressure is in the probationer’s best interest.

It is also my observation that only @10% of our clients are deliberately malicious or dangerous. The remaining 90% are simply irresponsible. That means that the probation officer is a surrogate parent. The term “mean” should be more justly translated “stern.” It’s interesting that “mean” is often a child’s response to a parent who loves him enough to provide structure and discipline. Success in our office is defined by personal growth and the willingness of our clients to take responsibility. Those successes are too rare, but they provide the impetus to keep officers going. Caring probation offices provide another chance for people who missed loving parental or pastoral authority. I realize that that statement raises a host of questions about church-state-family issues, which can be discussed at a later time. My point here is that our office acts as a safety net, not only to protect the community, but to salvage lives. Thank God for some “mean” folks.

The Island

2010-05-28T16:15:00.000-07:00

We have one of the most beautiful views in the world from our deck. We overlook a section of Douglas Lake, with English Mountain in the background. Just east of that are hills that roll up to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and we can see the range from Mt. Cammerer to Mt. LeConte. In the winter there is snow on the peaks. If I ever left here, I would miss the mountains.
But....

I love Hilton Head Island. So much, in fact, that Anne and I just bought slots in an outdoor columbarium at a church on the Island, so that our ashes can rest under live oaks, Spanish moss, and palmetto trees within the sound of the ocean.

We first started going there when Anne's folks retired and built a house in Sea Pines in the mid 70's. Our kids grew up going to the Island two or three times a year--swimming, riding bikes, hanging out in Harbor Town and listening to Greg Russell sing John Denver songs (and the all popular "Booger Snot") under the big oak tree across from the lighthouse. Greg is still performing for the second and third generations. Naturalist Todd Ballentine taught us about marsh life and its biological chain, and about the dolphins who buried their dead in the caves of Port Royal Sound.

On our first trip we crossed a two lane draw bridge across the Inland Waterway, got lost on the way to Sea Pines, had to loop all the way around Skull Creek to get to the Island's other end, and realized that we "weren't in Kansas" any more. It was absolutely beautiful.

Today the bridge is a sweeping four lane affair that hop-scotches over Pinckney Island Wildlife Refuge and joins a cross-island toll way that by-passes the business district along highway 278. Traffic can be a nightmare during major tourist seasons. There are more restaurants and night-spots, and the bike trails are more crowded. But the Island has not lost its ambience. This is due mainly to the foresight of the local leadership who planned ahead with strict zoning and building codes, not to mention that there are a number of gated communities that enforce their own rules and do their own landscaping. Anne's Dad died several years ago, and her Mom moved into a retirement community mid-island, so we no longer have free access to Sea Pines--we either scrounge or pay for a pass. But we still love the place.

So why not retire there? Aside from the obvious fact that we probably can't afford it, there are a couple of other reasons:

1) Hilton Head Island means vacation. I have a custom of rolling down the car window and smelling the sea and the marsh when we cross the bridge. My breathing eases. My mind relaxes. I am Home for a season. I know that Anne and I are going to walk on the beach and evaluate our lives and make plans. But Anne and I have a fear that if we lived there, we would lose all that. The place would no longer be special. And that is something we don't want to lose. Better for it to be a unique get-away and stay its special self.

2) Hilton Head is memories. We planned our lives and dealt with crises at home sitting on the beach or bobbing in the surf. We watched two children grow up. The sizes of the bikes we strapped to the roof of the van changed. The distance they rode them grew. There was the time they wanted to take friends and go places without Mom and Dad. I see them through all the subtle changes of their lives whenever I am there. I also see the persons that Anne and I were then, sitting on that beach thirty, twenty, ten years ago. The changes on the Island are hardly noticeable when compared to the memories that don‘t change. Somehow living there would be an attempt to hold to a past that can only be visited.

Of course, if we suddenly struck it rich, I might renege on my reasons for staying where we are. But for now, we'll settle for long weekends and a summer vacation.

Letters to Cynthia

2010-05-22T09:33:00.000-07:00

I'm in a dry period, between fighting allergies and preparing for vacation. Here are some quotes from Rosenstock's "Letters to Cynthia" to chew on. Cynthia was a student at Ratcliffe in the 1940's with whom Rosenstock corresponded. Later she became his secretary.

March 11, 1943:

"Gerda is back in our house since Phillip has scarlet fever. This 3 year old girl is asking me the two types of questions: Why do you do that? What is that?

"In watching her I became convinced that both questions are not asked without real pressure by her. She fears to be left out when she does not know. She feels life as a process and she desires to be a partner, a 'dancer' in the cosmic dance. Her question is not neutral, not curious, but fearful. How can I participate? The why and what express her effort to acquire new keys for participation. If she can be informed 'why?' she can join in the process unerringly. The question, then, makes her out not as an onlooker, but as a person thrown out by changes in the cosmic order and trying to re-enter it; the order in so far conceived by her three years, is upset by something new. And the new must be assimilated. Or it contains the danger of excluding her, Gerda, from further participation.

"All young people are eager for novelty because by learning new things they secure their participation in a world which for the adult is quite old and from time immemorial. Newness is so often just the newcomer's own newness. And his eagerness is very vital to him since his qualities as member of the cosmic ballet depend on his questioning in time and getting the right answer.

"This... question is based on a new person's volunteering to enter society. Questions are not meaningful if they attack the existence of any truth, any order, any power to join....
You may deny God by no longer asking for truth, you may deny man by no longer trusting him, you may deny the earth by committing suicide. But you cannot do so by ASKING those same questions as you quote Spengler, by denying God, Truth, progress. The simple fact that you speak, although in mere question, interrogatively, has ushered you into a universe in which truth and trust and toil are accepted by you. Truth from God, trust in man, toil on earth, are the pre-requisites for asking any question...."

April 28, 1943:

"Peace: a daily creation and a daily practice of our overcoming death.
Life: usually treated today as deathless. This amounts to the abolition of the law of cause and effect, for society.
War: the struggle between more integrated life and less integrated life goes on incessantly. Nature is in a state of war.
Wars happen when men relapse into a state of nature by not creating peace daily. These are my 'peace terms.' Obviously, no one can hope, under these terms to eliminate the relapse into a state of war as long as man is man.

"The specific form of war between nation states can of course be superceded in our time. It seems to become antiquated. But the "war" against which you rebel, is a more universal phenomenon. Its eternity means that any order for which nobody is willing to give his life is doomed. If wars between states are abolished, civil wars within this One Superstate will take their place. Man will not respect any order which is not made sacred by the only test we have. When people give their lives for something, they ascribe to this something a superselfish rank. This something may be an idol. The fact that Nazis die for their cause, does not prove their righteousness. Nevertheless, where nobody volunteers for giving battle, we do not even have so much as a cause! History is the story of real causes. This much I had to put down, lest you conclude that you have not been dealt with honestly from the beginning."

Dreams

2010-05-15T08:34:00.000-07:00

This blog is personal to the point of being maudlin. I may be writing for myself alone, or hoping for a Joseph who can interpret dreams.

Last night I had the third in a series of repetitive dreams with the same motif. These dreams have occurred roughly a year apart. In them I am with Anne and a small group of other unknown but friendly folks. We are looking at property. In the first dream it was a motel, in the second an old house, and last night a school building--one story with separate access to each classroom from outside. Our concern in the dream is that persons unknown, but that we care about, have their own space in a larger communal setting. "Would so-and-so like this?" "Would so-and-so fit here?"

In all three dreams the property needs to be cleaned up, but not renovated. It is structurally sound, but the flower beds need weeding, and a screw needs tightening, or a door needs painting. All the basic essentials are there--it only needs cosmetic work. We are excited.

The atmosphere of the dreams is not gloomy or fearful, rather the opposite. I am usually in a deep sleep when these occur, and everything is sunny and in technicolor. There is always a landscape: trees, sweeping green lawns, and flowers. We are hopeful, and talkative, and pointing at this or that. The place evidently perfectly meets some important need.

Waking up from these dreams is different. I weep as I come into consciousness. There is a deep sense of loss. I can't go back to sleep, and the atmosphere of the dream stays with me for days. Prophetic? Something from the sub-conscious? Something from the past? The fact that they are repetitive and very intense is significant.

Interpreting dreams is difficult because it is easy to introduce extraneous ideas, but I do think of two possibilities. One is my life-long fascination with the Ephesians 4 model of the church. There is some connection here to the need for individuals to have their special space in a larger community. I've run from this model for years (because it is almost impossible to bring to birth and sustain), but it is apparently going to assault me in the middle of the night.

The other is more obvious. Yesterday I went to a seminar put on by Moral Kombat, a program used by juvenile officers to teach values, tolerance, and proper self-image to teen-agers. The statistics were troublesome. 10% of teen-agers are gay or bi-sexual. 30% of teen suicides are because of struggles with sexual identity. Most have no concept of proper ethics in relationships or in the work place. Commitment to long term relationships is difficult for them. Please understand I am not playing "ain't it awful." But my heart goes out to these that are simply lost (even though I can no longer speak Adolescent), and need a safe room in the company of safe people who can hold them until their roots are firmly planted.

These dreams may be all about church.

More Thoughts on Sevier

2010-05-09T06:05:00.000-07:00

Several weeks ago I described the conflict in Sevier County over the posting of the Ten Commandments and the practice of prayer at County Council meetings. The conflict is not resolved, and we are awaiting Act II. Here are some more (rather random) personal opinions:

1) In The Origins of Speech, Rosenstock lists inarticulateness as a disease of speech. Christians in America are angry and frustrated, but are unable to verbalize what they feel or to clarify what they mean, even among themselves. Rosenstock states that revolution occurs when inarticulate shouts or groans find a voice or a word that summarizes the cause of the frustration, a voice or word that causes the discontent to say, "yes, that is what we mean." We may be on the verge of such articulation.

2)Peck and Strohmer, in Uncommon Sense, state that Christians are inarticulate because they do not use biblical language or concepts in their conflicts with unbelievers. For example, Christians insist on using political and "constitutional" language in the abortion debate, and in the process, back themselves into an unnecessary corner. Neither "right to life" nor "sanctity of life" are biblical concepts. No man has a right to his life; it is a gift of God. It is His to give and take away according to his will. And while a man's eternal existence as a perfected human being may be called "sacred," there is no "sacredness" to physical life in and of itself. The phrase has eastern overtones. The Bible, in fact, doesn't speak of "rights" or inherent sacredness, but of duties and responsibilities, which are intensely personal. The commandments are not demands that I lay on my neighbor, but revelations of my heart's attitude toward him. The use of "right to life" focuses on the fetus as an object outside myself that can be analyzed--hence the endless (and ridiculous) debate over when life begins. The question is not “when does life begin?” It is, rather: “what is my responsibility to the unborn?” This question is vitally personal and will not allow me the luxury of abstraction.

This is an illustration of how using political or constitutional, rather than biblical concepts opens debate on issues that miss the point. Somehow I feel we are in the same boat in the courthouse debate, and I am still working on that one.

3) It is my own conviction that when a culture has no absolutes to which it bows, the state becomes absolute. While humanists can list the oppressions and horrors propagated by religion (especially Christianity) through the ages, I can’t imagine that the statist solution offers anything better. In fact, it is far worse.

The removal of the Ten Commandments from a courthouse wall says, “We will not have this Man to rule over us.” But then, what else is new? That decision was made years ago. The pasture gate has been standing open for a while and the cows are gone. We live in a multi-cultural, multi or a-religious culture held together by a state with its own vocabulary and mythology. Taking a stand at the courthouse is a rear-guard maneuver that only looks silly in light of the age and depth of change in America. Is protesting at the courthouse really the "sticking point," the point of resistance, the point where one's own conviction crashes into the will of the state? I don't think so.

4) The fact is that outstanding believers in both covenantal eras faithfully served pagan or secular states. Classic examples are Joseph, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Mordecai, and especially Daniel and the three friends. The reason they could do so is simple: they believed that God was Lord of all history, that God governed through kings and emperors whom He raised up and put down. (Jesus recognized the authority of Pontius Pilate because He believed that His Father was the author of all earthly power.) That is why outstanding Old Testament believers showed respect to Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar, the Persian emperors, and why Paul insisted that Christians submit to the authority of Rome. But they also believed that the king was subordinate to Jesus Christ, and there was the rub, or I should say, the sticking point. When the authority insisted that a believer confess his hegemony over whatever God the believer served, the believer refused. The issue was who possessed final authority.

Notice that the sticking point was not whether the state was godly, pagan, or secular; or whether the state recognized God's authority. The sticking point was forced acquiescence to the final authority of the state over all gods and powers. It was at that point that the three friends went into the furnace and Daniel went into the lions' den.

This was the issue that faced Christians during the Roman persecutions. Rome was a multi-cultural, multi-religious state that practiced commendable tolerance within its borders. I do not find Christian protests against Caesar's declaration of himself as Dominus et Pontifex Maximus, terms which the Christians reserved for Christ alone. It was only when the state demanded a bit of incense, a mere tip of the hat to the final and ultimate godhood of Caesar, that Christians balked. That meant the individual was being forced to deny the ultimacy of his God. Pushed to the wall, the Christian could not assign the terms to both divinities. Jesus was Caesar's Lord, and the Christian could serve Caesar for that very reason. Being ask to reverse their rolls was blasphemy, both to the Christian and to the Roman, who saw not religious fanaticism, but treason, in the Christian resistance.

The sticking point, biblically, occurs when the Christian is forced to choose between Christ and Caesar, and when the choice for Christ is considered an assault on the state. Are we there yet? The difficulty with answering that question is that we are moving backwards in comparison to the first believers. The early Christian grew up in a pagan environment and gradually so influenced it that even the emperor bowed to Christ. We today are moving from 1500 years of Christian culture to a flagrant rejection of it. It is difficult to assume that modern American Caesars will not test the commitment of their followers. In the meantime the inarticulate frustration will continue to latch on to less than important issues and long for a clarifying voice. It may be that the articulate voice and the “sticking point” will coincide.

Look Out, Pilgrim: Epilogue

2010-04-30T16:44:00.000-07:00

Symbolism, then, is not some secondary concern, some mere curiosity. In a very real sense, symbolism is more important than anything else for the life of man.

-James Jordan

OK. I confess I've been foolin' around with this series. It sorta grew. After I wrote Look Out, Pilgrim I, I thought it was too gloomy. So I tried out #II as a balance. Then I decided to do #III for fun, to see if there was a third way to interpret the Temple symbol . At present I spend too much time in #I, I used to be a stronger advocate of #III, and I would love to live all the time in #II. That doesn't mean that this particular symbol is less than true, or subject to human whim; it means that it is larger than we supposed and encompasses more than one phase of human need and perception. Like their Creator, symbols have an endless quality about them. That's why their study keeps changing us.

Pilgrim, the way through the Temple is exciting.

Look Out, Pilgrim III

2010-04-23T18:15:00.000-07:00

Look Out, Pilgrim II

2010-04-17T08:34:00.000-07:00

Look Out, Pilgrim

2010-04-10T09:03:00.000-07:00

...(N)othing could hide the essential business of the Temple, which was the ritual slaughter, consumption and combustion of sacrificial cattle on a gigantic scale....To the unprepared visitor, the dignity and charity of Jewish diaspora life, the thoughtful comments and homilies of the Alexandrian synagogue, was quite lost amid the smoke of the pyres, the bellows of terrified beasts, the abattoir stench....

-Paul Johnson

This morning I was reading Ezekiel's vision of the eschatological Temple, and this quote from Johnson's A History of Christianity came to mind. I've read (and heard) countless lectures on the symbolism of the Tabernacle and the furnishings of the Temple, including a description of the Temple as seen from the Mount of Olives on a clear morning, when the sun, reflecting off gold and polished marble, blinded the pilgrim's eyes. But none of the commentators and allegorists tell the rest of the story quite like Johnson. I've always had a suspicion that under all the beautiful imagery there was another reality.

I have an aversion to blood, something I'm not proud of, but there it is. I've found myself wondering what it would have been like to be an Israelite lad taking his lamb to the place of slaughter. When it came down to it, would I become nauseous or faint? All that blood. Was there a stain on the earth when the Tabernacle moved on? How did they handle it at Herod's Temple, which had a paved court yard? Troughs?

I've thanked God often that I am on this side of the covenantal shift. Jesus became the propitiatory sacrifice for sin, the fellowship offering that brings peace between men, and the burnt offering of total dedication and worship. At a more selfish level, I am glad that I don't have to lay hands on a lamb and watch its throat cut. I am also grateful that the sacrifices of the Old Testament passed through the cross and became the bloodless oblation of the Eucharist. I much prefer bread and wine.

It is not my intention here to get into the doctrines of the atonement or of the Supper. I'm thinking about this at a personal/corporate level. If the Temple in the New Covenant is the church, where are the parallels? Cynically, I could say that the church (at least evangelicals) are willing to sacrifice human beings for orthodoxy and orthopraxy in a skinny minute. But that is, as I said, cynical.

So let me put it this way. I have loved the church and church life because of "the dignity and charity of diaspora life" and the "thoughtful comments and homilies." Stained glass, Easter lilies, the singing, the cleanness, the exhilaration of worship, the acceptance of fellow believers. I like the view of the Temple from the Mount of Olives, a foretaste of the eschaton.

But there is another side to life with Christ within me. I have said more than once that God is ruthless with my sin. Ruthless, at least, in comparison to my excuses and weak apologies. There is the smell of the blood of an unwilling animal deep within my heart, where God cuts and slices because He is much more concerned with my salvation than I am. And at a corporate level--well, love is easy at dinner in the church’s fellowship hall, where we look at each other through stained glass. But in the parking lot, at work, in the unguarded moments where the fear or anger or hurt of the other emerges, where either through a slip of the tongue or a genuine confession the truth comes out, when there is blood on the pavement, when the stained glass shatters and love becomes a call to die--that’s a different matter. And I’m speaking of relating to other believers. To reach out in love and acceptance to the people of the world, to rub shoulders with the irresponsible, the cynical, the controlling, the floundering, and that frustrating unbeliever who seems to find love and sacrifice easier than I, requires a rending that no man in his own strength can produce. Someone else must wield the knife.

Pilgrim, the way through the Temple is a messy business.

Spontaneous Earth...

2010-03-31T09:14:00.000-07:00

I know I shouldn't like the old pagan e.e. cummings, but I do, I do...

O sweet spontaneous
earth how often have
the
doting

fingers of
prurient philosophers pinched
and
poked

thee
, has the naughty thumb
of science prodded
thy

beauty, how
often have religions taken
thee upon their scraggy knees
squeezing and

buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive
gods
(but
true

to the incomparable
couch of death thy
rhythmic
lover

thou answerest

them only with

spring)

Overload

2010-03-27T05:59:00.000-07:00

The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer; My God, my strength, in whom I will trust; my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.

It may be an unwise time to blog. My health has been in grumpy mode since the pollen began. We are changing our computer system at work, with the attendant frustrations and loss of time. Our "clients" are increasingly rude, hostile, or stoned. And my Facebook/ meta-church/ electronic family has become so diverse that my inner world is expanding more quickly than I can process ideas. I am mentally tired. I am suffering from what I hope is a passing case of overload.

But the stress has had one interesting effect. I have seen Jesus through so many perspectives lately, that in frustration I've asked, "Who are you, Lord?" "I mean, really, Who are you?" My mind has become so encrusted with Christ as a theological concept, that I am again forced to the Center. And I don't mean "who are you to me." That would involve a conceptual definition. I mean, "who are you for me?" God made flesh, Man in the eternal Trinity, God suffering, God condescending, God loving, God broken, God not just giving life but giving himself as life--what does that have to do with my rising from my bed tomorrow?

I desire the trust that moves beyond knowledge, to not "concern myself with great matters, nor with things too profound for me;" to sit at his feet for a season.

"His desire is toward me..."

2010-03-20T06:24:00.000-07:00

The church has historically thought of the Song of Songs as an allegory of Christ and his church, or of Christ and the individual soul. More recent commentators, who feel that the allegorical approach is a cover up for the church's embarrassment about all things sexual, exalt the Song as a story of two lovers, no more, no less. Delitzsch strikes a middle ground: the Song is a love story, but because all love stories are reflections of The Love Story, it can be considered a type of the greater. So far I hold with Delitzsch.

Interpretive issues aside, no Christian who repeatedly reads the Song can escape finding himself in the narrative. In this entry I want to look especially at the three confessions made by the Shulamite--confessions that are the result of the actions of her lover.

The first confession is "My beloved is mine, and I am his." It follows two opposite experiences: first, disenchantment with serving in the vineyards for her brothers (religious experience defined by someone else--legalism),and, second, the giddy awareness of being in love. She is feeling both the relief of being loved, but also the fear of going back to what she came out of. Note the order of the confession: "he is mine" is spoken first. The relationship depends on her capacity to hold on. She is tenacious out of desperation and fear. While that is a mark of a new Christian fresh from the bondage of the world, it will eventually block maturity.

Her lover does not deal with this fear by consolation. Rather, he creates situations in which she must choose between her fear and her desire for him. She prefers the safety of their country home. But he comes and calls her away--and at least one time mentions the dreaded vineyards. When she disobeys, he withdraws his presence. In two instances he does this, and both times her love for him overcomes her reticence to follow. In one case she is abused by the "watchmen on the walls," the keepers of the status quo who do not believe it is proper for a young lady to demonstrate too much exuberance about her lover.

It is impossible to read these passages and not think of the "dark night of the soul" or the kataphatic/apophatic tension I mentioned in "Boxes," March 6. Most of us spend a long time in this phase. Notice the confession at the end of this process: "I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine." It is the reverse of the first. It is spoken by one who has learned the joy of obedience.

But it is not the last word. The third confession is "I am my beloved's, and his desire is toward me." The very words create a yearning in the heart, so close and packed with meaning, and yet so far away--causing one to stretch to hear it. This confession is not brought about by withdrawal and discipline. It is preceded by some of the most intense love poetry in any language. It is spoken out of intimacy; it is purely relational. It does not come from external experience, but from direct knowledge of the character of a person.

It is a statement of absolute rest, not lethargy; peace, not timidity; trust, not fatalism. She loves him because she knows the depth and security of his love. She returns to the vineyard, not out of obligation, but because it is where he is. May God bring us all to such a place before we die.

(Picture: 12th Century cover of a manuscript of the Song)

A Sevier Cynicism

2010-03-13T14:28:00.000-08:00

The Sevier County Commission has the 10 Commandments posted on its wall, and opens its meetings with the Lord's Prayer. Recently the Americans United for Separation of Church and State (AU) have raised objections and will probably take legal action. The County Mayor has dug in and will keep the Commandments on the wall and will continue the Prayer until forced to change. The next Commission meeting will be packed with church folks and some folks from the other side, and we will have, no doubt, another American Circus, with a lot of smoke and very little clarity.

I wish I could hide somewhere and wait this one out, but my job throws me into contact every day with local government folks who are choosing sides, and want to know what I think. So I want to offer my own muddle of perceptions and presuppositions, so when someone asks me what I think, I can refer them to this blog. Most of them won't take the trouble to click this and that, so I can continue to shrug the whole thing off, knowing that my opinions are available to anyone willing to take the trouble. Here are some pretty traditional thoughts, which may or may not be inter-related or even worthy.

1) Speaking culturally, religion is the over-arching worldview that holds a culture together. That can include anything from Christianity to humanism to syncretism. There is no such thing as neutrality by that definition, because neutrality is itself a religious concept. If the American religion is syncretistic humanism, then the Christian either has to tip his hat to a higher power than Christ, perceive Christ as the archetypal syncretistic humanist, or be recalcitrant. Anyone who wants to touch this, have at it.

2) I can see that the Lord's Prayer is uniquely Christian, though the need to forgive and have daily bread are common to all men. But what's the issue with the 10 Commandments? The three great monotheistic religions of the world base their moralities on them. And I can't imagine a Buddhist or Confucian having issues with them. CS Lewis included them in what he called the Tao--the basic values common to all cultures. They are culturally fairly syncretistic. Or is the AU suggesting that blasphemy, murder, adultery, theft, and lying are valid moral options? OK. Cheap shot.

3) Gary North once did a tongue-in-cheek piece on how a group of Presbyterians could steal a Baptist church building. The Presbyterians could find a little Baptist congregation, join the church in numbers, call a congregational meeting, vote to join the local Presbytery, and deliver the congregation to the Stated Clerk, building and all. His point was that democracy cuts its own throat. Being sweet to everybody doesn’t mean everybody is sweet. Treating everyone democratically means opening the door to a lot of undemocratic folk. See Europe.

4) Calvin believed in separation of church and state. The Founding Fathers believed in separation of church and state. I believe in separation of church and state. It is a principle in the Constitution. No argument. When the mantra is quoted today it really means separation of a transcendent God and state, a whole different animal. Without the Commandments, or the Tao, or some higher absolute, the state fills the void and becomes answerable to nothing beyond itself. All humanistic societies, from Rome to modern China, are statist to the core. America has been lusting after statism since (forgive me) 1865. Whatever. None of this is new--even boring in its repetitiveness.

5) I have a prophecy about this coming meeting. The AU will have cogent, pre-planned arguments backed by the power of law. They will look, well, cool. The church will be angry and frustrated, have no cogent argument, and have no power but that of a discredited tradition. It will back down and grumble for a few more years. I just don’t think I can stand it. I hope I’m wrong.

Boxes

2010-03-06T08:29:00.000-08:00

Let us, then, go to him outside the camp....

I believe it was CS Lewis who called God the great iconoclast. He was not speaking of the destruction of natural or sacramental symbols of God in the earth, but of our propensity to shape God in our own minds based on what we are taught, or even on our own experience of him. Inevitably our inner concept is smaller than the Person himself, and as we grow as Christians, our concept has to break in order for God to carry us to a new and broader understanding of him and of ourselves in relation to him. The fathers spoke of this process as the kataphatic/apophatic tension. We are much simpler—we use the term “think (or live) outside the box.”

That’s a wide topic, one that affects all age groups. I want to apply this to the group I know the best: older people. I am grieved at how people in their sixties plus not only live in unperceived boxes but have developed “life boxes”—what I like to call “baptized neuroses.” Timid, fearful folks are “peacemakers,” lifelong control freaks are “prophetic,” etc. I know too many of my peers who are stuck in some box, and can’t see their position. I am angry at the lack of growth in people that by now should be models of Christian experience. But of course I am really angry because I’ve struggled with my own box and the fear of dying in it.

My box is shared by a lot of Christian men my age: “th’Ministry.” It was a standard joke in Seminary that we all wanted to become “a world famous, humble country preacher.” Funny, yes, but true. That’s exactly what I wanted—to be like the pastors I revered as a child.

Evangelicals can revile the Roman hierarchy all they want, but there is no group that separates the “religious” from the “secular” more than they. To be a pastor or missionary is the apex of God’s approval. To fail in either is to be out from under that approval. With all our mantras about varieties of gifts, and blossoming where you’re planted, we still know there’s “something wrong” with the guy who used to be in th’Ministry. The evangelical world is full of a whole class of men who in their own minds bear the stigma of being less than something.

Of course, I just described a box. Younger people have the advantage of larger boxes to help them out of their smaller ones. We call it vision. A vision for a greater project, a different and more challenging ministry, makes it easier to leave the old one behind. But the older guy isn’t quite so visionary. I am not going to be an apostle to East Tennessee or take Sevier County for Jesus. There are younger men who can beat their heads against those dreams.

So, are the old guys left out where vision is concerned? In a way, yes. The vision for projects dies. But it is replaced by a Person. When I drove away from my last pastorate, my mind was full of anger, resignation, self-recrimination, and fear. But my heart was full of such an exhilarating freedom that I was afraid I was lapsing into licentious paganism. It took an effort to look solemn and not burst out laughing. I kept thinking of B’rer Rabbit: “Please don’t throw me into the briar patch….” Somehow I knew, along with the author of Hebrews, that there was something exciting out there--outside the camp.

Older guys finally have the opportunity to throw themselves on the breast of Jesus and let it all go—th’Ministry, the failures, the visions, the projects, the BOX—and come to Christ without encumbrance. And out of that comes life. Nature reveals God again. Love can flow because there’s nothing to lose. A man ceases to do things for God and simply walks with him. Funny. That’s what I was looking for in the first place.

Going Out and Coming In

2010-02-28T05:21:00.000-08:00

I recently saw a rerun of A Nun's Story, in which Audrey Hepburn plays Sister Luke, an accomplished nurse who serves in the hospital of her Order in the pre-World War I Congo. There she develops not only medical, but listening and caring skills that endear her to her patients. As war approaches in Europe, she returns to the mother house in Belgium and continues nursing. There she experiences growing conflict with her Mother Superior, primarily because she habitually skips Vespers because she is ministering to patients. In the final confrontation, Mother Superior reminds her, “You are a nun first, and a nurse second.” The implicit response to this statement is, “why should there be a difference?” and is really the theme of the movie. She leaves the Order to go back to the Congo.

There is no question that a Christian who serves God in the world will burn out if he does not operate from a center. Jesus withdrew from the crowds to pray. I read somewhere that Mother Teresa found it necessary to have the Eucharist served to her daily. But the time of separation and the time of service--what the Old Testament calls "going out and coming in"--is the devout rhythm of the Christian life, not an inner struggle between two priorities. Each grows out of the other.

The church as I have known her errs in the direction of the convent. During one of my pastorates I became involved with the local rescue mission. That meant that occasionally some unkempt folks showed up at our services. One of our parishioners allegedly asked another, “What bridge did he find them under?” He was concerned that everything be neat and clean and in its proper place. He had become a nun first. But lest I condemn him unjustly, I have to ask how much I, as his pastor, helped contribute to his attitude. I like neat and clean and orderly, and was never fully comfortable with those folks on the back row.

When I was sixty years old I left the institutional ministry, and discovered an alarming thing. I no longer had a title that allowed me to talk about God publicly because I was a “preacher.” I was suddenly just a naked Christian-in-the-world. It was depressing to find out, once titles and collars were gone, how little of the faith there was in me. I pouted for several years at what I perceived as a loss, and the stripping away of a veil. I had become a nun first, and God put me into a crucible.

I have gradually learned (very, very late) some basic truths out of this experience: 1) God is more concerned with a man’s character than his ministry. 2) Often, God sows older people into the world. 3) God loves the world. 4) John 15:5 is true. His life flowing through us brings permanent change. 5) That life is not some kind of cold power; it is the gift of the heart of God who is in love with the world. From God it reaches down. When it passes through us, it reach up to our fellows. 6) There is no difference between a man in Christ, the place where God places him, his everyday contact with other human beings, and a man’s ministry. Christ in man, and man in Christ, is ministry. The nun is a nurse, and the nurse is a nun.

Repentance

2010-02-20T05:49:00.000-08:00

(The Assistant Pastor at our church preached on repentance last week. Not sure which of these thoughts are mine and which are his, so I'll plagiarize right in front of everybody. Thanks, Mark.)

Last week I heard a sermon on Mark 1:15: “Repent and believe the gospel.” It stirred some basic truths in me, and it was good to hear them again.

First, to “believe” means that there is something outside myself that calls for my response. That means that the gospel has a separate identity from me, and is not something that comes into existence by my experience of it. The gospel in some sense leaves man out of the equation--though man receives its fruit, the gospel is really a covenant among the Persons of the Trinity that reconciles man to God. The Trinity acts upon its own counsels, and man’s response is to believe or reject. I find that a great comfort when I feel that I’ve failed as a Christian.

Second, is this easy believism or a legal fiction? No, because Jesus precedes the command to believe with the command to repent. The root meaning of repent is “change.” Therefore a command to repent presupposes that a man can change, or, better, that the gospel can change him. A man who is not changed by the gospel has failed to believe it. Belief brings change. The gospel is about the love of Christ. Love brings change. Christ call us to a beauty that only the imagination can reach. Beauty brings change. Repentance, therefore, grows out of the struggle and yearning to enter the future where Christ is.

Repentance breaks boxes--boxes not only of sin and addiction, but the boxes of self-interpretation that keep us from believing we can be more. Repentance is freedom.

(Picture: El Greco, The Trinity)

Renewals and Emergence

2010-02-13T06:21:00.000-08:00

Institutions state, “They know where I stand.”
Movements say, “Come, see a man, which told me all things that ever I did: is not this the Christ?”
-Henry Strunk

Renewals are both a reaction and a rediscovery. They are a reaction to deadness and lack of spiritual fervor, and the rediscovery of a forgotten emphasis: salvation, holiness, the Holy Spirit, tongues, healing, etc. Renewals also produce fruit or side effects, or what (until I come up with a better term) I will call attitudes.

One common attitude of a fresh renewal is eclecticism (See Let’em Eat Cake, 12/11/09). Renewals see themselves as the focal point of unity for the church, and are accepting of different forms of religious expression. The other attitude is inclusivism (See More Thoughts on Renewals,01/31/10). Inclusivism refers to the renewal’s treatment of unbelievers or seekers. Although past renewals have not analyzed it this way, inclusivism reverses the traditional steps of believe, behave, belong; to belong, behave, believe. I saw this work in the early days of the Charismatic movement. Young people came to our meetings and were immediately accepted. Peer pressure and teaching conditioned behavior, and belief was the result. I don’t remember that we ever compromised biblical morality in the process. The presence of God and the love of their fellows changed minds and lives. There was a power at work.

But it is a fact that renewals consistently reverse these attitudes within 20 or 30 years. Disillusionment over failed unity and persecution create an esoteric mind-set, and the need to define who “belongs” breeds exclusivism. This is a consistent pattern.

Eclecticism and inclusivism in renewals have always been treated as afterthoughts, something to be examined by Christian historians years after the fact. But something different is happening in the emergent movement. These two attitudes are not on the shelf. They are in the forefront of emergent literature. They are being self-consciously studied and examined. That is something new. The movement, for all its haziness and dangers, is defining itself by those two concepts, something I don’t believe any previous renewal has done.

If emergence can pull this off—really define eclecticism and inclusivism, and find ways to sustain them, then we are on the verge of a Reformation that could last beyond the normal life span of renewals. A whole new way of thinking could come forth. This is already manifested in the emergent description of their detractors as “necessary ballast” in the church—a case of including one’s potential adversaries in a greater scheme.

If, however, the gathering reaction to emergent attitudes begins to “get under the skin” of the movement, it will wear out in the next fifty years and become another persecuted True Church. Even worse, it could find ways to enforce eclectic and inclusive attitudes—a tragic paradox. Personally, I’m more hopeful than that.

Consistency

2010-02-05T17:01:00.000-08:00

"...the current of materialism which is farthest to the left, and is hence the most consistent, always proves to be stronger, more attractive, and victorious. Humanism which has lost its Christian heritage cannot prevail in the competition."

I recently reread Solzhenitsyn’s Harvard Address of 1978. It was a watershed evaluation of the decadence of Western culture seen through Russian eyes, and was not well received by the American liberal intelligentsia. Let me summarize two major emphases in the address. 1) Secular humanism has become the basic philosophy of both Western democracies and Eastern Soviet Communism. In the West it manifests itself as crass materialism and decadent freedom. In the East it expresses itself economically and politically. The secular humanism of both cultures represents a rejection of God, that is, a higher power that makes man significant apart from the state. 2) Communism is the most perfect and consistent expression of secular humanism, its culmination. In any culture war, the most consistent world-view will win. Therefore, says Solzhenitsyn, the West should fear Communism. The West simply does not have the courage to withstand Communist intensity, especially since the American intelligentsia is intrigued with it. The West cannot fight Communism because she is carrying the same disease.

So what happened? We have not feared the Soviet system since the Reagan era. Did consistency win? If we listen to the Western Press, plain old American democracy, freedom, and capitalism conquered the Communist beast. The lust for pepsi, pornography, Wrangler jeans, and toilet paper without a queue overcame the quest for the workers’ paradise; proof that in a contest among the seven deadly sins, greed will consistently trump envy. That’s the Western take on it. But as a romantic, I prefer to believe that the poetic Christian soul of Mother Russia could not be crushed, and remained more consistent in itself than its persecutors. I’m opting for that unless I get more data.

Of course we face a more direct and brutal consistency now. It is not secular, or humanistic, but intensely religious, giving divine sanction to an utterly simple directive. It does not require subtle exegesis to understand "death to the great Satan." Can our secular society out-consistent that? I have heard men in authority declare that the great enemy of our freedoms is fundamentalism (any fundamentalism, including the Christian variety). Their reason for this is interesting: "Any man who is willing to die for something is willing to kill for it." A huge assumption, given that Christians have generally preferred martyrdom to murder. That statement says much more about the speakers than about the object of their dislike. How can such a pusillanimous attitude stand in the face of a man who will joyfully blow himself into heaven with an igniter button? Even if we take Solzhenitsyn's much fairer version (any man who is willing to die for something will defend himself), where is the will in secular humanism against such consistency?

The fact is that secular man has no place in his understanding for such commitment. It is not the shahid that frightens him as much as the passion behind him. Again, where is there anything on this earth that can be more consistent than that?

Such consistency can be found only within the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. She understands passion without murder, commitment that opens arms to the world rather than closing against it. She knows that God's enemies are not necessarily hers; she knows that her death is for the life of the world (Schmemann). She has always outlived the ruthless and been there for exhausted cultures who were trying to remember who they were. It is time for the church to evaluate her own consistency.

More Thoughts on Renewals

2010-01-31T09:25:00.000-08:00

"Despite the ecumenical vision of the Catholic Apostolic church, which may be judged exceptional by virtually any standard, in practice and in fellowship they moved toward exclusivism as the years went by....From time to time the ecumenical vision would reassert itself....But in practice, the ecumenical motif found only sporadic and largely theoretical expression. The surviving remnant of the Catholic Apostolic church remained in the clutch of a stultifying exclusivism." -Larry Christenson

This is a quote from an essay on the Catholic Apostolic Church by Larry Christenson in Aspects of Pentecostal-Charismatic Origins, edited by Vinson Synan in 1975. The CAC, also known as the Irvingites, was the result of a renewal that began in Scotland in the 1830's. It included manifestations such as tongues, prophecy, and healing. The CAC also used a fixed liturgy, and its leadership consisted of both charismatic offices (apostles and prophets) and more traditional offices (bishops). It faded away roughly around 1900, and is the mostly forgotten forerunner of the Pentecostal movement.

My concern in this entry is the reoccurring movement in renewals from the inclusive to the exclusive. In its beginning, the CAC attracted Christians from across all denominational lines. But as it grew, the institutional authorities became alarmed, and eventually excommunicated its leader, Edward Irving. Over a period of time, the CAC began to see itself as a persecuted remnant, and assumed a "defensive posture against 'Babylon'."

The American Pentecostal movement of 1901 followed the same pattern. The Azuza Street revival was interracial and included all classes. One of its goals was to "bring unity and union to Christians everywhere." But as the movement grew and hardened, "the pentecostals rejected society because they believed it to be corrupt... while society rejected the pentecostals because it believed them to be insanely fanatical, self-righteous, doctrinally in error, and emotionally unstable." (Kilian McDonnell, The Baptism of the Holy Spirit as an Ecumenical Problem. Quoted by Christenson)

The Charismatic movement, which began @1957, brought the pentecostal experience into respectability, and was a phenomenon in both the middle and upper classes, attracting professionals and educated Christians. Its early leaders were from the high churches, mostly Episcopalians. The old Logos Journal, the first slick-back magazine of the movement, was full of articles written by the Sherrills, the Bennetts, the Scovalls, all Anglicans. Larry Christenson, whose article I am quoting, was a Lutheran clergyman. The first charismatic leader who prayed for me was Fr. Norm Scovall, an Episcopal Benedictine monk, who wandered onto our college campus wearing a clergy collar and a brown cassock, cincture and all. All those folks embraced their liturgy and found new power in it through the baptism of the Holy Spirit. I even remember a time when the Roman congregation in my town would sing in the Spirit when the priest raised the host! For a few brief years there was a convergence of ancient and renewed Christianity without any sense of contradiction.

But whether the new wine could not stay in old wineskins, or rejection and persecution brought a reaction, the Charismatic movement, with a few exceptions, has forgotten its own roots. When it left the walls of denominational churches, it became solidly anti-liturgical and anti-ritual. "Religion" has become the enemy, meaning that which was practiced by the movement's founders. The same pattern of renewals is clear here: from the inclusive to the exclusive. Let me now offer some summary thoughts:

1) This pattern is "normal" in church history. "The pattern of ecumenism leading to exclusivism is not inherent in pentecostal Christianity as such; it is simply the way things have gone with charismatic movements, dating back to one of the very first charismatic renewals, namely the Montanists." Christenson goes on to say the reaction to Montanism was so severe that the church has never recovered a balance or a willingness to bring charismatic expression into the full life of the church, equating spiritual gifts with doctrinal error. The result for the renewalists has been a "remnant" mentality--exclusivism.

2) No doubt the renewals of Hezekiah and Josiah produced a backlash from the established priestly leadership. Jesus certainly threatened the entrenched religious leaders of his day. It is the nature of renewals to force the powers that be out of neutrality. Renewals cost something--in reputation or even in livelihood. God seems to get something out of shaking the established church (in recent history, about every fifty years). He apparently enjoys the discomfiture of the pompous. Renewals give the church an opportunity to laugh at herself. They are, well, fun.

3) When a renewal loses its ecumenical vision, it stunts its own growth by cutting itself off from its own historic life springs. There is more to church life than the Baptism and gifts of the Spirit. There is thought (theology), there is worship (ritual), and there is a surrounding society (social justice). That is why I am hopeful about the emergent movement--it is a renewal that contains within itself much more than the exclusive renewalist emphasis on the Holy Spirit and experience alone. It is broader.

4) Sometimes renewals (and even churches) need to die. When they outlive their usefulness they stagnate. I love the old CAC because they chose to do exactly that. Prophecies began to come forth in their midst to die out--to appoint no more leaders after a certain time. There were prophecies that God would do a greater work--their dying would become a seed:

"In 1901, the last of the original leaders of the CAC died, portending a dying out of the movement itself. Yet in that very expectation of death there was a new hope.... That same year, halfway around the world, in a little Bible school in Topeka, Kansas, a faint offstage melody was heard. A group of students prayed for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit; one of them began to speak in tongues. The melody spread to Houston, Texas, then to Los Angeles. It had a familiar lilt...." (Christenson)

(Picture: Edward Irving, founder of the CAC)

Precipice

2010-01-23T08:49:00.000-08:00

Anne is away, and I am reading the prophet Jeremiah. Maybe not a good thing to do alone. Anyway, one theme is clear in the prophet: because Israel rejected God as their father and lawgiver, God turned them over to other gods, including the gods that they worshipped in their syncretistic religion. I hate being so simplistic, but that's how things work.

If the demographics hold, Europe will have a Moslem majority within twenty-five years. She has rejected the God of the two testaments and opted for secular humanism. The England of Richard, Magna Carta, Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer, Milton, Elizabeth, Shakespeare, Charles II (the merry one), and the Glorious Revolution, is awash with minarets. According to the cardinal rule of secular democracies (“we are the world”) she has welcomed the wolves in with the sheep, and cannot make the philosophical shift to stop the flow. Secular democracies are suicidal. But, according to Jeremiah, that is how things work.

What about the United States? The shift from the God of the two testaments to secular humanism is obvious, but the demographics aren’t quite as bleak. It’s possible that a new series of 9/11’s could force us to compromise (remember “peace with honor?”). In our new openness to welcome all gods, we may find ourselves ruled by one of them.

Of course the exegetical question of parallel arises. Is the United States the new Israel, or do Jeremiah’s warnings apply only to the church? I am still working on that one. The culture founded by the early Puritans was certainly self-consciously Christian. How much their covenant with God is still binding is a debate that may never end. My guess is that God does not as easily change His mind about agreements as we do.

There remains the question of the church as a parallel to Jeremiah’s Israel. This is dangerous ground, because I am a fallen man, given to being far too critical, and it would be easy to single out Catholics, liberals, dispensationalists, or somebody else I choose to dislike to blame for the fall of good old fashioned Calvinistic Americanism. That is too simplistic.

On the other hand, there are sins in the church. The church failed twice to stand for racial equality in our culture. Rosenstock stated somewhere that the humanists in America have out-humanized the Christians. This is true. The church in our culture has been a keeper of the status quo rather than a forerunner into new territory. There are also the prevailing sins of legalism and division that I wrote about in the series on Decadence and the Word (Dec 2009).

But I don’t want to go on a witch hunt for some specific wickedness. What troubles me is that the church--at least the “conservative” church--does not seem to be in a repentant mood. She is angry at losing hegemony culturally and politically. She is pointing the finger at the secular powers and blaming them for the dawning precipice. She doesn’t seem to be able to face the future without fear. Introspection has been drowned by eschatological escapism. I have a couple of responses to this:

1) Things change. In the Old Testament, when empires changed, when invasions occurred, the “sun was darkened, the moon turned to blood, and the stars fell from heaven.” Every few hundred years fault lines appear in history and things crack and heave, and an era ends to give way to a new one. God and history don’t mingle too well with comfort.

2)The church is in the center of God’s heart and all of history revolves around her. Events take place for her sake. Hard times and the collapse of eras strengthen her. When the lights come back on in a culture, the church always shines the brightest. And each time she is more humble and wiser. I love the story of T’ruth, the genetic turtle girl in Cordwainer Smith’s science fiction work The Rediscovery of Man. She guards and nurses the wisest man in the world in a time of storms and chaos, until he is needed again. She wears two crossed pieces of wood around her neck, and is a follower of the forbidden religion of the God Hung High. An allegory: truth guards wisdom until it is again needed by the world. That’s the mission of the church in history, and that, my friends, is exciting.

Bene soi La'Tenel

2010-01-15T09:20:00.000-08:00

The word that God is punishing Haiti because they have a voodoo pact with the devil is already out. I don't know whether to cry or scream. God's business is His business, as he directs the nations through history. My business is to do what is under my nose, conditioned by three truths: 1) There are many many sweet Christian people buried under the rubble of Port-au-Prince. 2) Because a man is God's enemy does not mean I am to treat him as mine. 3) The best way to convince an "enemy of God" of the love of Jesus is to clothe him and feed him. Give me a break.

Go, and Sin No More

2010-01-09T10:22:00.000-08:00

I heard Chuck Porta teach a few weeks ago on the story of the Woman Taken in Adultery in John 8. His approach to verse 10, "Go, and sin no more," was unusual. He reviewed the classic interpretation-- "Look at all I've done for you. I will give my life for you, and on that basis I forgive you. Now, don't you dare go and do this again, or else. You have been fairly warned." Porta rejected that interpretation as being out of sync with the atmosphere of the rest of the story. Jesus did not humble the Pharisees only to revive their attitude.

Instead, Porta suggested we take the phrase as a breathing into the woman of the power to obey--spoken not harshly, but with great compassion, equivalent to "Be healed!" or "Be free!" or "Be loosed!" It was a benediction, not a curse. It contained within it the "Let there be..." of the creative Logos. The phrase was not an external principle to be obeyed, but a transforming internal authority to be a new person.

Porta's exegesis moved me deeply, not only because it deepened my knowledge of Jesus, but because it was a perfect example of the power of the Word versus the Decadent use of the Word. Attitude is everything. The Decadent use of the word demands that Jesus ultimately side with the Pharisees; legitimate use of the Word breathes life and a new beginning through every phrase. God, grant us the grace to use the Word as light and freedom!

(Picture: Guercino, 1621)

Wishing

2010-01-06T18:22:00.000-08:00

Oh how we need one another! It has struck me lately that the shifts and stresses in contemporary church life are creating reactions and retrenchments, cries to return to the old ways without discerning that our approach to the old ways are precisely the problem. Liturgists want a more pure liturgy, and in the process exclude a greater number of worshippers. Social action Christians want more equality and justice, and in the process continue to open old sores and stir the same resentments. Evangelicals cry for more of the Word, not realizing that unless our use of the Word changes, legalism and division will continue to increase. And my own people, the charismatics, are yearning for another great renewal, unaware that renewals will not correct bad theology, nor will they change the fact that men live in a ritualistic world. It is as if each emphasis is stuck in its own history and trying to shout the old words more loudly to drown out the fear of the unknown world to come.

How sure we are of how God will move in history! And yet how can we not wish? I wish for a day when each emphasis shouts the word of its fellows more loudly than its own. I wish for a time when men look back to our day and call it the era of the Great Humility.

(Picture: Roman Church, San Juan, PR)

The Obligatory Year End Look Back

2009-12-31T14:51:00.000-08:00

2009 was a routine year, with two exceptions. One was the death of my mother in February. Christmas seemed strange without her, because as she grew older she increasingly became the center of the holiday, in some ways taking the place of children. That may have influenced our decision to go out of town for Christmas this year. The other exception was our cruise to the Lesser Antilles in June—just about as perfect a vacation as possible. I’ll be continuing to place pictures from the islands on my entries.

I turned 66 in ’09, and am a bit obsessed with getting older—actually with the unexpected twists my life has taken over those years. My desire to be a world-famous humble country Episcopal priest fizzled. God had other plans. The biblical pattern for older guys suggests that there may be a burning bush in my future, but I wonder about hoping for it—some days I consider such a hope to be neurotic—and try to focus on what is important today. As corny as it sounds, those foci are worship and love. I go out on my deck every morning and “awaken the dawn” with praise, and I try consciously to open my mind and heart to the lost and confused people I see every day. Anything beyond that is God’s business.

It’s obvious this past year that I’ve become intrigued with the “emergent church,” though my fascination is a bit abstract and comes more through reading than through experience. Sometimes I laugh, because the unbelievers described by emergents are 20 something intellectuals with a bent towards spirituality. The Appalachian-American kids I see every day are definitely not going to sit in Starbucks and talk about Jesus over a latte. The traditional country Baptists pastors speak the language and still have an impact. Anyway, this past year included a re-read of Bruce McLaren and the discovery of Phyllis Tickle. Rosenstock and Jim Jordan have provided a historic structure for understanding the cultural changes behind emergence.

This week I was part of a conversation with some other believers. The first half consisted of rehearsing the horrors perpetrated by Christians upon each other in the name of truth—experiences each one of us had been through (“the Church is the only army that shoots its own wounded….”--I have been both shooter and shootee), and how common pain, division, and rejection are among Evangelicals. We played a great game of Ain’t It Awful. The second half of the conversation moved to emergence. Most of the comments were negative or suspicious. I of course kept my timid mouth shut. But the inability or unwillingness to see a connection between the two topics was an eye-opener to me.

I’ll probably continue reading in the same vein in 2010. My lighter reading is leaning to military topics: Michael Shaara's WW II trilogy, also Band of Brothers (DVD), and a new book called Generation Kill, etc. Plan to go to Lee-Jackson celebration in Lexington next month in uniform! Also plan to keep working as long as my body tolerates it. Every year I go to bed 10 minutes earlier.

Speaking of getting older: I have a history, and too much of it is fallen and foolish to continue to believe that I have bought off God with good behavior. I believe he loves me because he created and redeemed me, and that his plan for me absorbs the bad stuff. His purposes are amazing for all of us. I echo Luther's statement in his commentary on Romans: "The only thing that makes you different from your pagan neighbor is Grace."

Happy New Year, Everybody!

Decadence and the Word Part IV

2009-12-28T08:52:00.000-08:00

I fear that this series on decadence has become repetitive, so this entry will be brief.

In Decadence and the Word Part II I ended by suggesting that the antidote to the Protestant propensity to schism is Paul’s teaching on mutual giftedness in Ephesians chapter 4. Such a view of the church is inclusive rather than exclusive, in fact, the more inclusive the better. The more a Christian opens himself to the gifts and perceptions of others, the broader and deeper is his own experience of Christ. Exclusion implies perpetual immaturity. This is true at the corporate as well as the individual level.

I have written previously that history may be viewed as the succession of God’s three special symbols—sacraments, Word, and man himself. If that pattern is true, we may be transitioning into the time of man as symbol. I do not means humanistic man, but Christian man, filled with the presence of Christ and manifesting him—Christian man who knows how his gifts fit within the church, and how his own needs and weaknesses are met by his fellows.

This means that the church needs to do renewed exegesis of the gifts and ministries of the Holy Spirit outside traditional Pentecostal/ Charismatic interpretations.

Also, a renewed emphasis on man as symbol opens the door to communicate with post-modern man, who places relationship over abstract thought, inclusiveness over exclusiveness, and connectedness over authority.

Decadence and the Word Part III

2009-12-19T08:48:00.000-08:00

This day of Grace 1654; From about half past ten at night, to about half after midnight, Fire.
-Pascal

It struck me after writing two entries on "Decadence and the Word" that I never summarized or attempted to give antidotes for Abstraction and Divisiveness. Of the members of the Christian quadrilateral (see "Let 'em Eat Cake"), the Renewalists could very well have the best answers. This entry deals with Abstraction.

The antidote to legalism or the abstraction of Scripture is a deep relationship with the Person of God himself. Any use of the Scripture outside relationship is misleading. Scripture reveals a Person, calls us to a Person, and is often a conduit through which He speaks and we speak back. The Person of the Trinity that indwells human beings and reveals the Father and the Son is the Holy Spirit. Therefore a major antidote to the abstraction of Holy Scripture is the Baptism and habitual filling of the Holy Spirit.

How strongly I wish that other portions of the church would not react to that last sentence. In fact, the reaction seems to be a recent thing, perhaps brought on by an arrogant attitude among Renewalists themselves, who often seem to believe they have some kind of special hold on the Holy Ghost. The fact is that there have been Charismatic-Liturgicals in history, from the Catholic Apostolic Church (Irvinites) of the 1800's to the Charismatic Episcopal church of today. There is also a renewed interest in social justice among younger Charismatics.

Conservatives (Evangelicals) would perhaps react the most strongly to my statement. I believe this is a classic case of throwing out the baby with the Charismatic bath water. Evangelicals had among them leaders who stressed being filled with the Spirit before there were any such thing as modern Renewalists: Torrey, Murray, Oswald Chambers, and more recently, Martin Lloyd-Jones (see Joy Unspeakable). Lloyd-Jones tells great stories about (would you believe?) Puritans who had subjective experiences with the Holy Spirit (including Jonathan Edwards). Church history would bear out that such experiences have been common. Evangelicals need to get over their fear of being thought "one of them" and embrace their own history. Renewalists need to recognize the place of the Holy Spirit outside their own traditions. One can hope that at the center of emergence the divisions get hazy anyway.

The church of the coming decades will go through a struggle over the nature of authority. At present our best guess is a combination of Scripture, the Holy Spirit, and the consensus of the local believing community. This is not possible without an outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the individuals involved.

(Picture: Antigua, Atlantic coast, 2009)

Let'em Eat Cake

2009-12-11T16:07:00.000-08:00

"Rejoice with Jerusalem and be glad for her,rejoice greatly with her, you who mourn over her."

Phyllis Tickle, in The Great Emergence, divided American Christianity into four groups: Liturgists, Social Action Christians, Conservatives (Evangelicals), and Renewalists (Pentecostals and Charismatics). It has not been unusual to find "bleed-over" between any random two of these groups-- conservative Charismatics, liturgical social activists, etc. What is unusual is that at the center where the four points meet there is a melting of these four that makes the lines indistinct and even meaningless-- much like the swirl created in a mixing bowl as new ingredients are added. Folks caught in this whirlpool of delight simply define themselves as "cake," as opposed to seeing themselves, let's say, as good old fashioned powdered batter that doesn't really like milk and thinks that all eggs are heretics.

That doesn't mean that a given ingredient doesn't know its name or history. It does means that it submits itself to the mixer and both yields and adds its tastiness to the final product. Charismatics have something to contribute at this point. For years they have stressed "body life" and the Pauline notion that the church matures as each individual member finds his calling and gifts for the common good, as well as submitting to the calling and gifts of others. What is happening at the meeting point of Tickle's four divisions is "body life" on a grander scale.

(The picture: this is Anne's Mom Alma on her 96th!)

Decadence and the Word Part II

2009-12-10T16:14:00.000-08:00

In my own quest, I am not ready to jettison the Scriptures as revelation. I feel that way, not primarily because of a doctrinal commitment, but because through the years I have found the Bible packed with meaning, comfort, power, mystery, and direction. I find that the power within it transcends arguments over redaction, editing, and transmission. The issue with the traditional Protestant approach to the Bible is not that it exalts it too highly, but that it has placed restricting walls that have made it more difficult for the seeker or unbeliever to see its worth. My last blog can be summarized: “the Word without the Spirit is dead.” In this blog I want to continue the theme of decadence and make a plea for a deeper humility when approaching the Bible.

When we approach the Scriptures from a Protestant point of view, we claim we are dealing with ultimate truth. Post-modern man does not have a problem with absolute truth, but denies that anyone can know absolute truth absolutely. We need to hear that, because decadence arises when the Christian confuses his interpretation of Scripture with Scripture itself. Consider that within a short time the Reformation went to war with itself over the “correct” interpretation of Scripture, the rationale being that if the Scriptures contain matters of life and death, then my interpretation (and yours) is also a matter of life and death. That means that from the beginning of the Reformation Christianity became exclusive rather than inclusive. The result is the decadence of incessant division.

I was struck recently how much the life of Christ affects our perception of Scripture (McLaren). To begin with the Incarnation forms a perception of Scripture. To focus on the life and teachings of Jesus creates another perception. The same is true of the passion, the resurrection, the ascension and session, and the second coming. (Grossly oversimplified, in order: Orthodoxy, liberalism, evangelicalism, Roman Catholicism, the Reformed, and dispensationalism.) Humility demands that we look through the eyes of another long enough to have our perception readjusted.

This is not difficult when we consider that our perception of biblical truth changes in our individual lifetimes. Our perceptions of God are always too small, and the Spirit brings us to crisis times when our old perceptions won’t work, and we have to reinvent our image of God. The Scriptures are always large enough to allow for the change. Jim Jordan once wrote an essay on “stage conversions” that stuck with me. A child who “accepts Jesus” will jettison that Jesus in his teens, unless he finds the Jesus for teen-agers; likewise when he is intellectually challenged in the college years. A thirty year old married man with two kids and a job needs a new Jesus, etc. I am in my sixties, and I am finding Him again. He grows with my need. So does the Bible.

My point here is not to introduce some kind of hopeless agnosticism, but to call for a humility based on the limitless vastness of God’s revelation, and our own inability to perceive more that a sliver of it. Humility would also allow us to see a new vision of God through the eyes of those we shut out—inclusive rather than exclusive.

Decadence and the Word Part II

2009-12-10T16:13:00.000-08:00

Decadence and the Word, Part I

2009-12-06T12:06:00.000-08:00

In Luther's Day the sacraments reached their highest point of decadence. That statement is of course a shortcut; the sacraments have never been decadent. It was man's misuse of them for power, money, and control that sparked Luther's revolt against the Roman hierarchy. It was the system that had become decadent. Luther reached back into pre-sacramental history and pulled the Word forward to create a revolution.

I want to suggest that we are at a similar turning point in history, only instead of the sacraments, it is the Word that has become decadent. Again, a shortcut. The Word in itself is truth and power. But after 500 hundred years of Word-centered Protestantism, it should be obvious that there is decadence in the church's use of the Word. I want to suggest two manifestations of this decadence in this and the next blog.

I want to call the first Legalism (the Word without the Spirit), but I am instead going to use the term Abstraction, defined as the substitution of chosen principles for relationship, or the exaltation of the indicative mood over the imperative (Rosenstock).

Modern, Reformational, Enlightenment man believes the indicative mood is the "normal" mood, the mood of reason, reality, and objectivity. It is detached and dispassionate. The exaltation of the indicative means that all biblical truth can be systematized , and the highest knowledge of God is doctrinal. Those who see the indicative as normal are suspicious of the imperative, which creates demands and immediacy, heat instead of cool abstractions.

But life is simply not lived in the indicative. Life is a response to major imperatives which shape us and define us. We are shaped without our consent before we learn to think abstractly. The doctor slaps us and says, Breathe!" We don't ask for this new world outside the womb; it is thrust upon us. For years we are told, "come and eat", "chew with your mouth shut", "get up and get dressed." We are baptized (or dedicated) and told to renounce the devil and all his works before we offer any consent in the matter. Those imperatives are spoken by persons or a Person, by a Thou opposite us, whose imperatives tell us who we are (Buber). No man becomes who he is in a vacuum, outside relationship to another. No abstract "It" or principle can awaken us at the depth of the call of the Thou.

The imperatives in our lives are the prelude and backdrop to the subjunctive phase--the phase of probability, of possibility, of "maybe", or "can" or "can't" or "will" or "won't." It is the time to be shaped by our imperatives or renounce them. As we get older, we conquer or fail, or both. That means that the longest part of our living is in the uncertainty of the subjunctive, an uncertainty marked by both despair and ecstasy.

After the subjunctive mood comes the perfect tense. Paul concludes his farewell to Timothy with, " I have kept the faith." Note the use of the perfect, the tense of completion. In the perfect mode we sing of victory, weep for losses, and cast all into the lap of a sovereign God.

After the perfect phase, we write our memoirs, which are an analysis of imperatives, subjunctives, and the perfect tense in our lives. Memoirs are in the indicative mood. Note that the indicative occurs at the end of our lives, not at the beginning. The folly of modern man is that he writes his memoirs before he has lived. The notion that a man can sit in an ivory tower and choose what he wants to be is a denial of reality, and a heavy burden. A man is not defined by abstractions, but by a divine call and by his gifting in relation to other men.

Post-modern man questions the abstractions of the indicative. Theological constructs and lists for moral behavior do not meet the need for a Voice, for a Love that stands over against him with an imperative beyond personal choice, with the lyrics of the subjunctive, and with the completeness of the perfect tense. The Christ that the church professes meets the cry of such men. It is time to move beyond abstractions. (See Gen. 3:9, Isa. 40:6, Eph. 4:7.)

The Word and Decadence, Part I

2009-12-06T06:03:00.000-08:00

New Blog

2009-12-05T06:34:00.000-08:00

Howdy! Welcome to my new blog. Appreciate Dave Keyser letting me piggy-back on Theoreflections, but hated to clog up all his space. I'm still contemplating cultural/church changes and post-modernism through the eyes of Rosenstock, Buber, Jim Jordan, and the Apostle Paul. More to come when I get set up. -Rick